UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFO  ■' 


=.==3 


^ 


GIFT  OF 

Larry    Laughlin 


THE  WAR 

.-i— .  AND  — 

CULTURE 


A  REPLY  TO 

PROFESSOR  MUNSTERBERG 

BY 
JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 


G  ARNOLD  SHAW,  Publisher  NEW  YORK 


The  War  and  Culture 


THE  WAR  AND 
CULTURE 


A  REPLY  TO 
PROFESSOR  MUNSTERBERG 


BY 

JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

8$aff  Lecturer  on  Literature  for  Oxford    Univertitf  Extension 

Delegacf.     Education  Department  Free  City  of  Hamburg. 

Verein  fuer  Neuere  Philologie,  Dresden  and  Leipxig. 

University  Lecturers'  Association,  New  York 


PUBLISHED  BY 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

NEW  YORK 
1914 


Copyright,   1914,  by  G.  Arnold  Shaw 


CHAPTER  I. 

CAUSES   OF   THE  WAR. 

Professor  Miinsterberg's  book,  entitled  "The 
War  and  America,"  claims  to  lift  the  contro- 
versy about  this  war  out  of  the  unworthy  region 
of  bitter  and  personal  recrimination,  into  the 
nobler  atmosphere  of  large  political  ideas  and 
great  world-movements.  His  contention  is,  that, 
judged  from  this  standpoint,  the  war  must  put 
Germany,  in  the  eyes  of  all  justice-loving  Amer- 

^  icans,  in  a  better  and  more  appealing  position 

I2ythan  the  AHies. 

With  this  end  in  view  Professor  Miinsterberg 
sweeps    aside    all    the    reports    about    German 

" .  brutality  and  German  vandalism  and  concen- 
■  trates  his  attention  upon  two  main  propositions : 
First,  that  Germany's  preparations  for  the  war 
were  purely  defensive;  second,  that  Germany's 
defeat  in  the  war  would  mean  a  devastating 
blow  for  "culture,"  and  a  disastrous  set-back  to 
the  best  interests  of  humanity.  With  regard  to 
those  acts  of  German  vandalism  which  he  sweeps 
out  of  his  path.  Professor  Miinsterberg  has  only 
one  word  to  say :  "Is  there  any  truth  in  all 
this?  Yes;  one  truth,  which  is  undeniable, 
which  is  sad,  which  is  awful,  namely,  that  war  is 


Ji'ic^iaM? 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

war."  To  this  interesting  acknowledgment  that 
war  is  a  game  with  no  rules,  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  adds  the  following  charming  example  of 
airy  and  graceful  humor:  "When  the  big 
head-lines  tell  the  reader  again  that  the  German 
soldiers  slaughtered  babies  yesterday  in  the 
town  which  they  captured,  he  will  conjecture  for 
himself  that  in  reality  they  probably  slaughtered 
some  chickens  for  which  they  paid  in  full." 

In  spite  of  his  use  of  the  term  "war  is  war," 
as  an  answer  to  all  critics  of  German  war- 
methods,  our  Professor  cannot  resist  the  temp- 
tation to  make  certain  "side-issue"  appeals  to 
proverbial  American  opinion.  "The  Americans," 
says  he,  "did  not  like  Japan's  mixing  in  on  the 
side  of  England.  This  capturing  of  Germany's 
little  colony  in  China  by  a  sly  trick,  when  Ger- 
many's hands  were  bound,  had  to  awake  sym- 
pathy in  every  American.  But  this  was  outdone 
by  the  latest  move  of  the  campaign  which  has 
brought  Hindus  from  India  and  Turcos  from 
Africa  into  hne  against  the  German  people.  To 
force  these  colored  races,  which  surely  have  not 
the  slightest  cause  to  fight  the  German  nation, 
into  battle  against  the  Teutons,  is  an  act  which 
must  have  brought  a  feeling  of  shame  for  the 
Allies  to  every  true  American." 

How  naive  indeed  must  be  the  Professor's 
sense  of  American  intelligence!  Without  the 
least  disparagement  to  the  attractive  negro  popu- 
lation in  America,  no  one  would  for  a  moment 
think  of  comparing  them  to  the  children  of  the 
immemorial  traditions  of  India.     To  introduce 


CAUSES   OF  THE  WAR 

such  a  comparison  at  all  with  this  invidious  ex- 
pression, "colored  races,"  is  only  to  throw  the 
shadow  of  special  pleading  across  the  whole  of 
his  argument.  We  shall  hope  to  show,  before 
we  have  concluded,  how  not  only  Indians  and 
Arabs  and  Japanese,  but  every  race  in  the 
world,  of  every  shade  of  "color,"  have  a  very 
good  reason,  and  a  very  substantial  motive,  for 
coming  into  battle  against  the  Germans.  It  is  a 
pity  that  in  his  preliminary  clearing  up  of  the 
issues  before  carrying  the  question  into  the 
higher  court  of  world-interests,  the  professor 
should  have  found  it  necessary  to  score  so  many 
petty  and  superficial  triumphs.  It  is  a  greater  , 
pity  that  he  should  have  permitted  his  patriotismif^ 
to  overcome  his  sense  of  logic  and  to  lead  him 
into  plain  self-contradiction.  But  this  is  what 
happens.  For  instance,  on  page  43  we  read :  "It 
was  the  moral  right  of  France  to  make  use  of 
any  hour  of  German  embarrassment  for  re- 
capturing its  military  glory  by  a  victory  of  re- 
venge. And  it  was  the  moral  right  of  England 
to  exert  its  energies  for  keeping  the  control 
of  the  seas  and  for  destroying  the  commercial 
rivalry  of  the  Germans.  No  one  is  to  be 
blamed."  But  on  page  90  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  admits  that  he  has  "hurled  many  a  re- 
proach against  France  and  England."  "I  thought 
it,"  he  there  says,  "inexcusable  for  them  to  use 
the  advantage  of  the  hour  to  join  Russia  in  this 
fight.  I  regretted  the  revenge  feeling  of  France  /, 
and  the  ungenerous  attitude  of  England  towards 
its  new  rival  in  the  world's  markets." 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

It  is,  of  course,  quite  justifiable  for  a  patriotic 
German,  endeavoring  to  enlist  the  sympathies  of 
America  for  his  Fatherland,  to  make  much  of 
the  fact  that  in  this  war  Germany  and  Austria 
stand  (with  the  ambiguous  support  of  Turkey) 
alone  against  the  world.  This  is  an  aspect  of 
the  matter  in  which  one  can  well  enter  into  a 
German's  feelings  and  indeed  sympathize  with 
them.  It  is  a  splendid  commentary  upon  the 
war-like  power  of  Germany  and  her  unequalled 
preparation  for  war  that  with  these  terrific  odds 
against  her  she  should  still  be  hopeful  of  victory. 
But  does  it  not  occur  to  the  professor  that  the 
mere  fact  of  Germany  having  put  herself,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  so  many  nations,  completely 
in  the  wrong,  is  an  argument  against  her  claim 
of  merely  defensive  preparations?  "Securus 
judicat  orbis  terrarum,"  says  the  Catholic  motto : 
and  a  race  that  has  managed  to  bring  down  upon 
itself  the  dread,  dislike,  and  suspicion  of  the 
whole  civilized  world ;  a  race  that  can  claim  as 
its  ally  no  power,  little  or  great,  except  the 
power  of  the  Sublime  Porte,  can  hardly  be  re- 
garded as  sacrificing  itself  for  the  cause  of 
civilization. 

Professor  Miinsterberg  attributes  this  strange 
alliance  of  the  nations  against  his  Fatherland  to 
the  Mephistophelean  machinations  of  King 
Edward  the  Seventh  ;  but  one  finds  it  hard  to 
believe  that  even  that  diplomatic  monarch  could 
so  influence  civilization,  east  and  west,  as  to 
make  it  commit  a  complete  moral  suicide. 
"Securus  judicat  orbis  terrarum."     And  if  Ger- 

8 


CAUSES    OF   THE   WAR 

many  has  roused  against  herself  the  dislike  and 
suspicion  of  the  world  it  is  surely  because  the 
world  instinctively  feels  that  the  triumph  of  Ger- 
man ambition  would  be  disastrous  and  not  bene- 
ficial to  humanity  at  large. 

At  the  same  time,  putting  Miinsterberg  and 
his  argument  aside  for  the  moment,  who  with 
any  dramatic  or  human  feeling  can  deny  that 
the  spectacle  of  this  heroic  struggle  of  one  race 
for  world-dominance,  of  one  race  against  all  the 
other  races,  is  a  spectacle  calculated  to  arouse 
both  wonder  and  admiration.  Even  admitting 
that  the  worst  were  true  about  the  matter  of 
German  barbarities,  and  one  prays  that  the  worst 
is  not  true,  it  still  remains  a  heroic  struggle,  and 
a  struggle  which,  in  the  peculiar  Hegelian  senses 
is  profoundly  tragic. 

In  one  point  in  this  bitter  controversy  we  hold 
Professor  Miinsterberg  absolutely  right.  We 
hold  him  right,  in  fact,  against  some  of  the  most 
authoritative  opinion  both  in  England  and  in 
America.  I  mean  in  the  matter  of  the  Kaiser. 
Much  has  been  said  about  the  Kaiser  in  relation 
to  this  war  that  seems  more  than  irrelevant. 
With  regard  to  the  ruler  of  a  nation,  it  is  surely 
from  the  nation  itself,  rather  than  from  out- 
siders, that  one  must  look  for  enlightening  opin- 
ion. Let  us  judge  the  Kaiser  from  the  German 
point  of  view  as  we  should  judge  the  Tsar  from 
the  Russian  point  of  view,  or  the  President  of 
the  United  States  from  the  point  of  view  of 
Americans.  No  nation  has  a  right  to  impose/ 
upon  another  its  peculiar  and  especial  politicaf 


THE  WAR   AND   CULTURE 

system.  No  nation  has  a  right  to  assume  that  it 
has  the  poHtical  system  which  is  the  best  for  the 
world  at  large.  For  ourselves  we  hold  that  the 
political  system  of  the  future  is  neither  that  of 
Germany  nor  of  the  United  States ;  not  even  that 
of  our  own  democratic  England.  Our  view  is 
that  the  political  system  of  the  future  will  be 
based  upon  certain  vast  economic  changes,  which 
at  present  are  only,  so  to  speak,  "in  the  air." 
When  they  come  it  will  no  longer  be  a  question 
as  to  whether  the  Anglo-Saxon  parliamentary 
polity  or  the  Russian  "religious"  polity  is  to 
dominate  the  world.  It  will  indeed  be  no  longer 
a  war  between  nations.  It  will  be  a  war  between 
international  capital  and  international  labor.  It 
will  be  a  war  under  what  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  quaintly  but  not  unhappily  calls  a  state  of 
"cosmochorism." 

We  are  not  inclined  to  make,  either  Edward 
the  Seventh,  as  Miinsterberg  does,  or  the  Kaiser, 
as  so  many  English  and  Americans  do,  responsible 
^^for  this  war.  The  responsibility  for  this  war 
rests  ultimately  upon  the  nations  themselves  who 
are  engaged  in  it;  or  rather,  let  us  say,  it  rests 
upon  those  profound  underlying  evolutionary 
movements,  which,  with  volcanic  force,  overturn 
the  cleverest  diplomacy.  As  Professor  Munster- 
berg  says,  though  he  retracts  it  almost  immedi- 
ately afterwards,  "No  one  is  to  blame."  In  this 
devil's  war  the  responsible  powers,  if  we  may 
say  so  without  blasphemy,  are  the  gods  them- 
selves. In  other  words  the  thing  was  inevitable. 
Fate    pushed     them     on — Germans,     Russians, 

10 


CAUSES   OF  THE  WAR 

French,  English,  and  the  rest — and  breath  used 
in  disputes  about  responsibility  is  breath  wasted. 
The  question,  of  course,  remains :  Who  were  the 
articulate  mouthpieces  of  this  fate,  of  this  in- 
evitable catastrophe?  And  here  we  are  com- 
pelled to  differ  completely  from  Professor 
Miinsterberg;  and  not  only  so  but  to  find  him 
a  little  disingenuous  and  obscurantist  in  his  line 
of  argument. 

Professor  Miinsterberg  is  doubtless  right  when 
he  speaks  of  the  Kaiser  as  the  symbol  of  the 
German  people,  as  the  expression  of  the  unity 
and  purpose,  of  the  courage  and  defiance,  of  the 
German  race.  In  these  things,  where  it  is  a 
question  between  Government  and  People,  out- 
siders had  better  leave  it  to  the  nation  itself  to 
decide. 

It  is  no  doubt  sad  for  a  Socialist  to  have  to 
admit  it,  but  considering  the  answer  of  German 
Socialism  to  Jaure's  proposal  of  an  international 
strike,  there  seems  no  other  alternative  than  to 
subscribe  to  Professor  Munsterberg's  words: 
"Who  are  the  people  whom  Mr.  Ehot  wishes  to 
save  from  the  ruthlessness  of  the  Emperor,  if 
not  the  Social  Democrats  and  the  two  million 
volunteers?  The  Emperor  acted  as  their  agent. 
No  President  of  a  republic  could  have  been  more 
the  spokesman  of  a  nation."  According,  then,  to 
the  German  view,  according  to  the  view  of 
Miinsterberg  and  his  friends,  the  German  people 
and  the  German  Emperor  must  settle  the  "re- 
sponsibility" between  them.  One  would  wish  to 
keep  the  German  Socialists  out  of  this  patriotic 

11 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

understanding.  History  may  perhaps  be  able  to 
make  this  desirable  distinction.  Certainly  the 
reported  suppression  of  the  BerHn  Socialist 
newspaper  supports  such  a  view.  On  the  other 
hand  one  knows  the  fatal  force  of  "patriotism" 
— the  fatal  force  of  that  human  fear  of  being 
thought  "afraid"  which  drives  so  many  into  the 
field.  But  whether  or  not  the  Kaiser  speaks  for 
the  German  Socialists,  Professor  Miinsterberg  is 
surely  right  when  he  says  that  he  represents  the 
average  man  of  German  public  opinion. 

It,  however,  still  remains  true  that  the  pro- 
fessor's argument  is  a  disingenuous  one.  It  is 
disingenuous  in  his  complete  omission — a  surely 
very  significant  omission — of  any  reference  to 
Treitschke  or  to  Bernhardi.  I  am  quite  prepared 
to  agree  that  the  military  clique  in  Germany  is 
not  alone  responsible  for  this  war.  No  mere 
clique,  no  mere  war  party,  could  ever  succeed  in 
rousing  the  spirit  of  a  nation  as  the  German 
nation  has  been  aroused.  But  this  matter  of 
great  popular  German  writers  is  quite  another 
thing.  I  am  afraid  it  is  only  too  obvious  why 
Professor  Miinsterberg  makes  no  mention  of 
these !  After  reading  these,  it  is  not  very  easy 
to  maintain  our  belief  in  the  purely  pacific  inten- 
tions of  a  Germany,  untouched  by  world- 
ambitions  ! 

"Germany's  pacific  and  industrious  population 
had  only  one  wish :  to  develop  its  agricultural 
and  industrial,  its  cultural  and  moral  resources. 
It  had  no  desire  to  expand  its  frontiers  over  a 
new  square  foot  of  land  in  Europe.    The  neigh- 

12 


CAUSES   OF   THE   WAR 

bors  begrudged  this  prosperity  of  the  Fatherland 
which  had  been  weak  and  poor  and  through 
centuries  satisfied  with  songs  and  thoughts  and 
dreams.  They  threatened  and  threatened  by 
ever  increasing  armaments."  So  writes  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg ;  but  unfortunately  it  has  not 
been  Professor  Miinsterberg,  but  much  more 
daring  and  adventurous  geniuses,  who  have  been 
the  mouthpieces  of  the  working  of  fate  in  the 
matter  of  German  public  opinion.  The  great 
Treitschke,  a  really  national  historian,  and  one  of 
enormous  genius  and  power — a  man  in  every  re- 
spect much  more  remarkable  than  Miinsterberg's 
Euckens  and  Harnacks — devoted  his  whole  life 
to  inspiring  the  German  people  with  his  ideal  of 
offensive  war,  for  the  sake  of  world-domination. 
Bernhardi,  whose  book  has  done  so  much  to 
popularize  these  views,  quotes  Treitschke  on 
every  page.  I  will  at  present  content  myself 
with  quoting  Bernhardi.  "It  may  be,"  says  he, 
"that  a  growing  people  cannot  win  colonies  from 
uncivilized  races,  and  yet  the  state  wishes  to 
retain  the  surplus  population  which  the  mother 
country  can  no  longer  feed.  Then  the  only 
course  left  is  to  acquire  the  necessary  territory 
by  war.  Thus  the  instinct  of  self-preservation 
leads  inevitably  to  war  and  the  conquest  of  for- 
eign soil.  It  is  not  the  possessor  but  the  victor 
who  then  has  the  right.  The  procedure  of  Italy 
in  Tripoli  furnishes  an  example  of  such  condi- 
tions, while  Germany  in  the  Morocco  question 
could  not  rouse  herself  to  a  similar  resolution. 
In  such  cases  might  gives  the  right  to  occupy  or 

13 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

to  conquer.  Might  is  at  once  the  supreme  right 
and  the  dispute  as  to  what  is  right  is  decided  by 
the  arbitrement  of  war.  War  gives  a  biologically 
just  decision,  since  its  decisions  rest  on  the  very 
nature  of  things." 

Thus  we  find  Bernhardi  setting  forth  the 
•"darwinian,  or,  if  you  will,  the  Nietzschean,  doc- 
trine, of  the  necessary  "struggle  of  existence," 
and  the  necessary  "survival  of  the  fittest." 
Many  persons  in  England  and  America  are 
bound  by  their  principles,  if  not  by  their  prac- 
tise, to  regard  such  plain  words  as  pure  Machia- 
vellian cynicism ;  and  such  perhaps  they  are :  but 
the  fact  remains  that  in  a  sense  they  are  true. 
In  a  deeper  and  more  extended  sense  it  may  turn 
out  that  they  are  untrue.  It  may  turn  out  that 
what  Bernhardi  calls  the  "nature  of  things," — in 
other  words,  the  life-spirit — demands  something 
more  from  its  successful  votaries  than  mere 
strength  and  cunning,  if  they  are  ultimately  to 
triumph. 

But  whether  true  or  false  this  Nietzsche- 
Treitschke-Bernhardi  doctrine  of  the  rights  of 
biological  superiority  is  a  doctrine  with  a  logical 
enough  basis  and  a  formidable  enough  energy  to 
be  of  considerable  philosophic  weight.  And  it  is 
by  this  doctrine,  for  after  all  every  German  is 
a  philosopher,  much  more  than  by  the  bullying 
of  a  military  caste,  that  the  people  of  the  Father- 
land have  been  converted  to  the  idea  of  a  war 
for  world-domination. 

Beginning  with  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  and 
the  policies  of  Bismarck,  the  German  people  have 

14 


CAUSES   OF  THE  WAR 

been  preparing  themselves  with  amazing  industry 
and  science  for  this  terrific  biological  struggle 
against  all  rivals.  Nor  is  it  easy,  though  I  do 
not  regard  it  as  impossible,  to  prove  that  such 
a  theory,  in  defense  of  preparation  for  de- 
liberately offensive  war,  is  unphilosophical  or 
fantastic.  At  any  rate  this  is  the  philosophy — 
these  are  the  philosophers — upon  which  the  mind 
of  young  Germany  has  been  moulded.  Now,  it 
is  in  our  opinion  disingenuous  of  Professor 
Miinsterberg  and  unworthy  of  his  psychological 
insight  that  he  should  have  suppressed  all  men- 
tion of  these  great  names.  Fancy  a  German  writ- 
ing about  German  moral  values  and  German 
culture  and  not  even  so  much  as  referring  to 
Frederick  Nietzsche!  What  are  we  to  think  of 
this?  Professor  Miinsterberg  must  have  dis- 
covered in  his  well-earned  holidays  in  his  native 
land  that  it  is  not  to  Eucken  and  Harnack,  but 
to  Treitschke  and  Bernhardi  that  the  hearts  of 
his  young  countrymen  have  turned.  The 
speeches  of  the  Kaiser  are  much  more  in 
harmony  with  the  doctrines  of  Treitschke  than 
with  the  doctrines  of  Eucken.  And  Professor 
Miinsterberg  admits  that  behind  the  Kaiser  is 
the  German  people.  The  professor  does  indeed 
speak  in  one  place  of  "a  few  pensioned  naval 
officers  and  retired  colonels  who  gloriously 
out-Hearst  the  Hearst  editorials — but  nobody 
takes  them  seriously,  and  to  identify  the  govern- 
ment with  such  hashish-dreamers  is  pre- 
posterous."     In    the    next    sentence    the    same 

15 


THE  WAR   AND   CULTURE 


(y^ 


group  of  thinkers  are  styled  "courageous 
clowns." 

Now,  to  call  the  great  historian  and  patriot, 
Treitschke,  a  "hashish  dreamer"  or  a  "cour- 
ageous clown"  is  what  one  might  expect  from 
an  Anglo-Saxon  lecturer.  From  such  lips  as 
his  the  phrase  would  have  an  intelligible  mean- 
ing. It  would  also  doubtless  have — and  prob- 
ably has  had — its  psychological  value,  as  a 
moral  weapon,  in  the  hands  of  an  Anglo-Saxon 
statesman.  But  from  a  German — from  a  Ger- 
man as  patriotic  as  Professor  Miinsterberg — 
the  words  are  curiously  unconvincing.  If  he 
really  believes  in  their  truth,  if  he  really  thinks 
•  that  the  good  Eucken  and  the  latitudinarian 
Harnack — arch-types  of  that  "Philistine-Cul- 
.  ture"  which  the  great  Nietzsche  reprobates — 
are  to  be  regarded  as  nearer  the  spirit  of 
modern  Germany  than  these  more  daring  ones, 
one  can  only  say  that  his  association  with  cer- 
tain rhetorical  aspects  of  Anglo-Saxon  life  have 
spoiled  the  innocence  of  his  mind. 

Or  does  he  only  do  it,  does  he  only  suppress 
Nietzsche  and  celebrate  Eucken,  because  he 
knows  that  the  one  is  a  persona  grata,  and  the 
other  a  bete  noir,  in  this  particular  country? 
If  so  I  am  afraid  that  one  must  accuse  the  pro- 
fessor of  catering  most  unworthily  to  public 
opinion.  The  present  writer  is  perfectly  aware 
that  the  line  he  is  taking,  in  many  portions  of 
this  pamphlet,  is  a  line  contrary  to  much  of 
""^  American  thought ;  yet  he  may  modestly  claim 
\^     that  he  knows  the  American  people  better  than 

16 


CAUSES   OF  THE  WAR 

Professor  Miinsterberg,  if  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  fancies  he  can  gull  them  by  over-empha- 
sized agreement.  The  professor  does  indeed  go 
so  far  as  to  claim  that  it  is  largely  owing  to  his 
eloquence  on  their  behalf  that  the  American 
people  have  been  "better  understood"  in  Berlin 
of  late.  The  present  writer  submits  that  the 
American  people  are  quite  well  able  to  take  care 
of  themselves,  and  do  not  by  any  means  require 
a  professorial  introduction  to  the  Fatherland  of 
modern  efficiency. 

It  must  indeed  strike  the  American  sense  of 
humor  as  extremely  funny  when  one  after  an- 
other of  the  warring  nations  of  the  old  world 
comes  gently  forward  to  beg  for  America's 
moral  support.  Still  more  funny  must  it  appear 
when  the  spokesmen  of  these  nations  naively 
try  to  appeal  to  American  prejudices,  with  such 
references  as  the  one,  for  instance,  which  we 
have  already  noted,  about  dragging  in  the 
"colored  races."  Poor  Professor  Miinsterberg! 
He  had  always  praised,  he  tells  us,  the  Ameri- 
can "fairness,"  as  one  of  America's  profoundest 
qualities — and  now — he  is  at  a  loss  what  to  say ! 

He  is  especially  troubled  over  the  fact  that, 
for  once,  public  opinion  in  the  United  States 
and  public  opinion  in  Japan  should  be  running 
in  the  same  direction.  What  a  monstrous  asso- 
ciation is  this !  Does  it  not  occur  to  him  that 
a  nation  which  has  roused  against  itself  such 
an  orbis  terrarum  of  universal  distrust,  as 
must  be  implied  in  such  an  agreement,  is  prob- 
ably not  on  the  side  of  the  "nature  of  things"? 

2  17 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

It  almost  seems  as  though  the  art  of  hypocrisy, 
j      which,  they  say,  is  "the  toll  vice  pays  to  virtue," 

"jK  was  never  less  present  than  in  recent  German 
history.  Germany  has,  in  a  manner  almost 
pathetically  naive  and  open,  made  it  perfectly 
clear  what  she  was  seeking.  It  is  a  pity  that 
she  was  not  able  to  use  Professor  Miinsterberg's 
genius  for  psychology  in  the  field  of  high 
diplomacy.  The  truth  is  that  the  German  soul 
is  much  more  simple  and  childlike  than  the  soul 
of  Frenchmen  or  Russians  or  English,  and  this 
simplicity  of  soul  has  never  been  more  clearly 
proved  than  in  the  way  in  which  through  both 
her  leaders  and  her  thinkers  she  has  made  clear 
to  the  world  what  she  aimed  at.  She  has 
accepted  MachiavelHan  principles,  without  ac- 
quiring the  Machiavellian  subtlety ;  and,  if  she 
falls,  this  blunder  will  be  one  of  the  reasons 
of  it. 

It  is  no  doubt  with  this  un-Machiavellian 
confession  of  Machiavellian  motives  that  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg  is  secretly  indignant. 
Hence  his  desire  to  suppress  any  mention  of 
the  "clownish  hashish-dreamers"  who  have 
moulded  modern  German  thought. 

No  doubt  Professor  Miinsterberg  is  perfectly 
justified  in  sweeping  aside  as  irrelevant  all  the 
useless  disputes  that  have  lately  been  banded 
about  as  to  the  immediate  cause  of  the  war. 
Professor  Miinsterberg  himself  finds  the  cause 
of  the  war  in  the  inevitable  desire  for  expansion 

!^^  of  the  Russian  nation.  We  are  quite  ready  to 
subscribe  to  this  if  he  will  add  to  it,  as  of  equal 

18 


CAUSES   OF  THE   WAR 

importance,  the  inevitable  desire  for  expansion 
of  the  German  nation.  Indeed,  truth  compels 
us  to  go  yet  further  and  add  the  inevitable 
desire,  to  resist  this  latter  expansion,  of  the 
English  and  the  French  nation.  Lastly,  let  it 
once  more  be  said,  in  the  professor's  own  no- 
table phrase,  "no  one  is  to  be  blamed." 


19 


CHAPTER  11. 
A   WAR   OF   IDEAS. 

Although,  as  we  have  seen,  the  underlying 
cause  of  this  war  is  the  expansion  of  the  Teu- 
tonic and  Slavonic  peoples,  yet  the  war  having 
once  started,  the  very  nature  and  character  of 
these  two  opposing  races  and  of  their  allies, 
creates  a  desperate  conflict  of  ideas,  following 
upon  the  conflict  of  armed  force,  and  reacting 
upon  it. 

It  is  this  conflict  of  ideas  which  will  tend 
more  and  more  to  give  the  war  its  historic 
character,  and  in  the  final  issue  to  outline  and 
determine  the  readjustments  of  power  and  terri- 
tory. A  colossal  world-war  of  this  kind,  when 
once  started  upon  its  catastrophic  career,  rouses 
and  unloosens,  with  volcano-like  violence,  all 
sorts  of  hidden  spiritual  forces ;  which,  in  their 
turn,  react  upon  it  and  direct  it.  The  appeal 
which  both  sides  keep  so  fiercely  making  to  what 
Bernhardi,  in  his  philosophical  language,  calls 
the  "nature  of  things,"  and  what  most  Ameri- 
cans would  prefer  to  call  "the  will  of  God,"  is 
an  appeal  which  proves  how  profound  and  in- 
vincible is  the  awakening  of  such  hidden  forces. 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  universe,  in  so  far  as 
the  Issues  of  this  war  are  concerned?  What  is 
the  will  of  the  invisible  powers?  This  is  indeed 
the  very  question  that  both  sides  are  seeking  to 

20 


A    WAR   OF   IDEAS 

solve  by  the  clash  of  arms  and  by  the  clash 
of  ideas. 

Nothing  is  more  interesting  than  to  observe 
how,  as  this  cataclysmic  avalanche  sweeps  for- 
ward, the  logic  of  the  ideas  involved  becomes 
more  and  more  clearly  outlined.  There  is  in- 
deed a  certain  living  and  creative  energy  in  such 
ideas,  which,  as  the  struggle  advances,  leads 
to  more  extreme  distinctions,  and  more  formid- 
able divergence.  Each  new  nation  that  enters 
the  struggle  on  the  side  of  the  Allies  will  find 
itself  swept  irresistibly  into  the  logic  of  the 
ideas  the  Allies  stand  for;  and  each  new  nation, 
if  there  are  to  be  any,  which  enters  the  strug- 
gle on  the  side  of  Germany,  will  necessarily 
subscribe  to  the  idea  of  the  Germans.  Human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  and  human  conscious- 
ness being  what  it  is,  it  is  impossible  that  this 
should  not  be  the  case.  There  is  a  logical  evolu- 
tion of  feeling,  as  well  as  a  logical  evolution 
of  reason,  and  both  of  these  tend  to  be  more 
and  more  definitely  defined  under  the  stress  of 
the  articulate  idea  which  gives  them  form. 

And  what  are  these  opposing  ideas,  and  what 
their  dififerences?  It  is  not  difficult  to  define 
them,  even  at  this  point;  and,  as  the  struggle 
goes  on,  the  logic  of  their  opposition  will  be- 
come yet  more  apparent.  We  may  assume, 
without  question,  as  a  fundamental  axiom, 
applying  as  much  to  nations  as  to  individuals, 
that  the  "will  to  power,"  the  will  to  expand, 
the  will  to  develop,  the  will  to  assert  personality, 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  every  conflict  of  races.     It 

21 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

is  the  push  and  impulse  of  that  primordial  race- 
egoism  under  the  stress  of  which  so  many 
world-movements  have  taken  place.  But  though 
we  must  allow  the  presence  of  this  will  to 
power,  both  in  the  nations,  which,  like  England 
and  France,  seem  almost  to  have  expanded  to 
their  limit,  and  those  which,  like  Russia  and 
Germany,  are  still  in  the  process  of  expansion; 
yet  the  shape  and  form  which  this  egoism  takes 
is  bound  to  become  more  and  more  different. 
The  German  egoism  expresses  itself  in  the  Ger- 
man "Idea";  and  the  egoism  of  the  Allies  ex- 
presses itself  in  the  AUies'  "Idea."  What  we 
have  to  attempt  to  do  is  to  define  these  opposed 
"ideas"  and  to  indicate  their  difference. 

It  is  only  in  this  way,  and  not  by  joining  in 
the  irrelevant  discussion  over  "White  Books" 
and  "Orange  Books,"  that  the  American  people 
— or  at  least  those  among  them  not  already  com- 
mitted by  race  ties — will  be  enabled  to  give 
their  final  verdict.  The  German  "Idea"  is  not 
difficult  to  indicate.  We  have  had  it  defined 
for  us  in  writers  who  are  learned  and  philo- 
sophical, in  writers  who  are  passionate  and 
popular,  in  ordinary  German  conversation,  in 
the  speeches  of  German  authorities,  and  in  the 
recent  history  of  German  diplomacy.  I  am 
afraid,  in  the  light  of  all  these,  one  must  regard 
Professor  MiJnsterberg's  account  of  the  German 
"Idea,"  as  rather  a  piece  of  special  pleading, 
addressed  to  the  American  people,  than  as  a 
philosophic  analysis.  "Germany's  pacific  and 
industrious  population   had  only  one  wish:   to 

21 


A   WAR   OF   IDEAS 

develop  its  agricultural  and  industrial,  its  cul- 
tural and  moral  resources." 

According  to  this  view,  a  view  which  must 
have  for  its  economic  and  political  possibility, 
one  of  two  requisites — the  possession  of  vast 
areas  of  uncultivated  land  or  an  equilibrium  in 
the  growth  of  population — the  "Idea"  of  the 
German  race  is  not  different  from  the  "Idea" 
of  that  portion  of  the  American  people  who 
view  with  dislike  and  suspicion  any  growth  of 
imperialistic  principles.  But  the  economic  and 
political  requisites  for  this  idea,  of  pure  indus- 
trial and  cultural  development,  are  absent  in 
Germany.  In  Germany  the  population  increases 
with  amazing  rapidity,  and  the  available  amount 
of  uncultivated  land,  suitable  for  the  normal 
needs  of  a  white  race,  remains  limited  and  in- 
sufficient. It  has  been  remarked  by  a  great 
English  publicist  that  Germany's  demand  for 
colonies  is  an  absurd  demand  because  she  has 
not  developed  properly  the  colonies  she  pos- 
sesses. The  answer  to  this  is,  that  the  colonies 
she  possesses  cannot  compare,  in  their  adapt- 
ability to  the  needs  of  a  white  race,  with  those 
already  in  the  possession  of  the  enemies  of 
Germany.  No;  the  "Idea"  represented  by  the 
German  people,  the  "Idea"  for  which  the  Ger- 
man people  have  struggled  for  forty  years,  the 
"Idea"  to  which  the  German  people  have  been 
converted  by  the  direct  reaction  of  their  most 
popular  thinkers  upon  the  fundamental  attri- 
butes of  the  German  character,  is  not  that  of 
pure  industrial  development.     It  is  more  signifi- 

2Z 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

cant  than  that,  more  formidable  than  that.  It 
is  indeed  nothing  less  than  the  organization  of 
the  German  race  into  one  terrific,  defensive  and 
offensive  machine;  a  machine  which  may  be 
used — nay !  by  the  implication  of  its  very  exist- 
ence, must  be  used — for  the  spread  of  German 
culture  all  over  the  world,  and  the  increase  of 
German  power  wherever  it  is  possible. 

The  German  "Idea"  is  therefore  the  Idea  of 
the  primary  importance  of  the  State.  Accord- 
ing to  it,  the  State  and  its  welfare  must  not  only 
override  all  other  interests,  but  absorb  and 
transmute  all  other  interests.  Against  the  State 
no  individual  has  either  rights  or  claims ;  and 
to  increase  the  power  and  efficiency  of  the  State 
every  means  is  lawful.  The  State  becomes, 
therefore,  what  it  was  in  the  Greek  city  of 
Lacedaemon,  a  living  and  formidable  organism, 
a  terrific  and  irrisistible  machine,  guided  by  one 
will,  driven  by  one  intention,  without  scruple 
and  without  remorse,  prepared  to  sacrifice  to 
itself  every  alien  exigency,  regarding  nothing  as 
sacred  beyond  it  or  above  it  or  beneath  it,  per- 
mitting nothing  to  share  its  worship,  nothing  to 
intercept  the  sacrifices  it  demands.  "The 
morality  of  the  State,"  says  Bernhardi,  "must 
be  judged  by  the  nature  and  raison  d'etre  of 
the  State,  and  not  of  the  individual  citizen. 
But  the  end-all  and  be-all  of  a  State  is  power, 
and  he  who" — here  he  quotes  the  great  Treit- 
schke — "is  not  man  enough  to  look  this  truth  in 
the  face  should  not  meddle  in  politics.  Machia- 
velli  was  the  first  to  declare  that  the  keynote 

24 


A   WAR   OF  IDEAS 

of  every  policy  was  the  advancement  of  power. 
This  term,  however,  has  acquired  since  the  Ger- 
man Reformation,  a  meaning  other  than  that  of 
the  shrewd  Florentine.  To  him  power  was  de- 
sirable in  itself ;  for  us  the  State" — here  he 
quotes  Treitschke  again — "is  not  physical  power 
as  an  end  in  itself,  it  is  power  to  protect  and 
promote  the  higher  interests — power  that  must 
justify  itself  by  being  applied  for  the  greatest 
good  of  mankind."  We  must  not  allow  our- 
selves to  be  misled  by  the  phrase,  "the  greatest 
good  of  mankind,"  into  assuming  that  the  Ger- 
man "Idea"  hesitates  for  one  moment  as  to 
where  "the  greatest  good  of  mankind"  lies.  It 
lies,  obviously  and  necessarily,  in  the  vigorous 
spreading  of  German  culture,  German  methods, 
German  efficiency,  German  science,  German 
obedience  and  docility,  wherever  it  is  possible 
for  German  arms  to  spread  them.  "The  Chris- 
tian idea  of  sacrifice  for  something  higher  does 
not,"  our  authority  goes  on,  "exist  for  the  State 
— for  there  is  nothing  higher  than  it  in  the 
world's  history ;  consequently  it  cannot  sacrifice 
itself  to  something  higher." 

It  is  important  to  do  full  justice  to  this  great 
and  formidable  Idea — this  Idea  which  is  at  the 
back  of  Germany's  heroic  fight  against  the 
world.  The  State-Machine  is  the  god  of  the 
German  idolatry;  but  the  State-Machine,  to 
which  all  other  interests  must  be  sacrificed,  and 
than  which  there  is  nothing  higher  in  the  world, 
is  to  be  constantly  associated  with  spiritual  and 
cultural    aims.      These    spiritual    and    cultural 

25 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

aims,  not  themselves  higher  than  the  State,  for 
nothing  can  be  that,  but  implicit  in  the  Idea 
of  this  particular  State,  because  it  is  the  State 
of  the  cultured  German  people,  will,  and  must, 
naturally  be  pursued  as  the  State  increases  its 
power.  "Accordingly  it  is  the  duty  of  the  State 
to  remain  loyal  to  its  own  pecuhar  function  as 
guardian  and  promoter  of  all  higher  interests. 
This  duty  it  cannot  fulfil  unless  it  possesses  the 
needful  power.  The  increase  of  this  power  is 
thus  from  this  standpoint  also  the  first  and  fore- 
most duty  of  the  State.  This  aspect  of  the 
question  supplies  a  fair  standard  by  which  the 
morality  of  the  actions  of  the  State  can  be  esti- 
mated. The  crucial  question  is,  how  far  has  the 
State  performed  this  duty,  and  thus  served  the 
interests  of  the  community?  And  this  not 
merely  in  the  material  sense,  but  in  the  higher 
meaning  that  material  interests  are  justifiable 
only  so  far  as  they  promote  the  power  of  the 
State  and  thus  indirectly  its  higher  aims." 

We  are  thus  enabled  clearly  to  understand 
what  the  "Idea"  is  for  which  the  Germans  are 
fighting,  and  fighting  so  heroically,  in  this  war. 
They  are  fighting  for  the  increase  of  the  power 
of  their  State,  an  increase  of  power  which  does 
not  only  imply  the  world-domination  of  German 
material  interests,  but  the  world-domination  of 
German  efficiency  and  German  culture  ;  in  a  word, 
of  the  German  spirit.  The  remarkable  thing 
is,  that  this  inspiring  and  formidable  Idea,  of  a 
State-Machine,  higher  than  the  interests  of 
which  there  is  nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  is  an 

26 


A  WAR   OF  IDEAS 

idea  which  has  brought  under  its  spell  every 
element  in  the  German  race.  Even  Professor 
Miinsterberg's  "Harnacks  and  Euckens  and 
Haeckels"  have  succumbed  to  it;  and  the  Social 
Democrats  have  given  it  their  enthusiastic  ad- 
hesion. Looking  round  the  modern  world  to 
seek  analogies  for  this  German  Idea  in  foreign 
nations  Bernhardi  rejoices  to  discover  it  in  the 
spirit  of  modern  Japan.  It  will  be  interesting 
to  see  in  the  future  how  far  the  contact  between 
Japan  and  her  western  allies,  how  far,  in  fact, 
the  logic  of  the  situation,  in  regard  to  this  war 
of  Ideas,  changes  and  modifies  this  Japanese 
spirit  which  Bernhardi  finds  so  analogous  to  the 
German  one.  In  Russia,  however,  he  finds  a 
different  mood.  "In  Russia,  on  the  contrary, 
the  idea  was  preached  and  disseminated  that 
'Patriotism  was  an  obsolete  notion,'  'war  was  a 
crime  and  an  anachronism,'  that  'warlike  deeds 
deserved  no  notice,'  'the  army  was  the  greatest 
bar  to  progress,  and  military  service  a  dis- 
honorable trade.'  "  Now,  without  agreeing  with 
this  view,  a  view  which  the  events  of  the  pres- 
ent war  and  the  present  attitude  of  the  "intel- 
lectuals" in  Russia  renders  absurd  enough,  we 
may  at  least  observe  that  it  emphasizes  the 
enormous  gulf  that  exists  between  the  "Idea" 
of  Russia  and  the  "Idea"  of  the  German  nation. 
Of  Russian  feeling  in  regard  to  the  Japanese  War 
what  Bernhardi  says  is  undoubtedly  true.  The 
"intellectuals"  were  opposed  to  it  and  the  revolu- 
tionaries rebelled  against  it.  In  this  war.  how- 
ever, everything  is  different.    The  Russian  people 

27 


THE  WAR   AND   CULTURE 

are  now  behind  the  Russian  government  as  they 
have  never  been  behind  it ;  and  they  are  behind  it 
for  a  sufficient  reason.  They  are  behind  it  be- 
cause they  see,  because  every  NihiHst  and  every 
Moujik  in  Russia  sees,  that  what  is  at  stake  is 
the  hberty  of  the  Russian  soul  itself.  The  ex- 
pansion and  liberty  to  expand  of  the  Russian 
people,  of  the  whole  Slavonic  race,  is  menaced, 
and  menaced  directly  by  Germany.  The  Idea  of 
Russia,  the  soul  of  Russia,  the  psychological 
character  of  Russia,  all  these  are  profoundly 
and  desperately  opposed  to  German  methods. 
The  Idea  of  Germany,  the  German  State-Ma- 
chine, the  German  Bureaucracy,  the  German 
philosophical  militarism,  are  all  alien  and  hostile 
to  the  spirit  of  Russia. 

The  mere  changing  of  the  name  Petersburg 
to  Petrograd  is  an  indication  of  this.  And  al- 
though there  is  no  doubt  that  the  autocratic 
circle  at  Petersburg  was  formerly  strengthened 
and  supported  by  their  fellow-autocrats  in  Ber- 
lin, this  association  has  now  ended.  A  freer, 
more  organic,  more  spontaneous,  more  popular 
spirit  is  already  being  manifested  in  the  Rus- 
sian Government.  Old  Petersburg  drew  sup- 
port for  its  sinister  police  system  from  the 
sinister  police  systems  of  Germany  and  Austria. 
New  Petrograd  will  have  a  diflferent  police 
system. 

The  logic  of  the  opposition  of  Ideas,  in  this 
war  of  Ideas,  will  sweep  Russia  further  and 
further  away  from  Germany,  nearer  and  nearer 
to  France  and  England.     One  has  only  to  com- 

28 


A  WAR   OF  IDEAS 

pare  the  recent  utterances  of  the  Kaiser  with 
those  of  the  Tsar  to  see  the  essential  differences 
between  the  Ideas  of  the  two  races.  The  Kaiser 
appeals  to  the  Lord  in  the  familiar  tone  of  one 
referring  to  a  region  of  spiritual  force,  which 
must  inevitably  assist  the  German  State,  while 
the  German  State  has  the  power  to  assist  itself. 
The  Tsar  appeals  to  the  Lord  as  the  High 
Priest  of  a  mystical  nation  might  appeal,  with 
awe  and  enthusiasm,  to  the  invisible  and  tre- 
mendous world-spirit,  which  is  above  all  States, 
and  can  carry  out  its  will  by  means  of  many 
or  of  few,  of  weakness  or  of  strength.  I  said 
the  logic  of  Ideas  would  sweep  Russia  nearer 
France  and  England.  This  will  probably  be 
true  as  far  as  the  political  autocracy  of  Russia 
and  the  police  system  of  Russia  are  concerned. 
In  the  deeper  things  of  the  spirit,  however,  in 
those  things  where  Russia  is  most  different 
from  Germany,  it  will  be  towards  Russia,  and 
the  soul  of  Russia,  that  England  and  France 
will  be  led.  In  these  deeper  aspects  of  that 
complex  Idea,  for  which  the  Allies  are  fighting, 
against  the  more  simple  Idea  of  Germany,  it 
will  be  Russia  rather  than  England  or  France 
that  will  strike  the  dominant  note.  Professor 
Miinsterberg  recognizes  this,  and  regrets  it ; 
endeavors,  indeed,  to  make  out  of  it  an  eloquent 
appeal  to  America,  whose  ideas,  he  explains,  are 
rather  German  than  Russian,  to  help  in  with- 
standing it. 

The  present  writer  does  not   regret  it.     He 
rejoices  in  it.    He  holds  the  view  that,  from  the 

29 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

standpoint  of  the  larger  interests  of  civiliza- 
tion, it  is  not  good  that  the  ideals  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  the  Teuton,  different  indeed  from 
one  another  but  both  differing  from  the  Rus- 
sian, should  dominate  the  world  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  Russian  ideals.  The  present  writer  would 
welcome  the  defeat  of  the  Teutonic  ideal,  and 
a  closer  fusion  of  the  ideals  of  England  and 
Russia.  From  all  this  it  will  be  seen  how  much 
more  complex  the  Idea  of  the  Allies  must 
necessarily  be  than  the  Idea  of  the  Germans. 
The  Idea  of  the  Germans  is  the  Idea  of  one 
race,  set  resolutely  upon  forcing  it  on  the  rest 
of  the  world  by  means  of  military  and  scientific 
efficiency  and  by  means  of  the  State-Machine. 
The  Idea  of  the  Allies  is  compounded  of  many 
elements,  each  race  among  them  furnishing  its 
own,  and  only  the  common  opposition  to  Ger- 
many, and  the  accumulative  pressure  of  the  logic 
of  the  situation,  having  the  power  to  fuse  these 
variables  into  one  inspirational  whole. 

The  triumph  of  Germany,  for  instance,  over 
France  would  mean  a  disastrous  blow  to  Latin 
civilization :  and,  in  the  present  writer's  opinion, 
between  German  civilization  and  Latin  civiliza- 
tion, as  far  as  the  future  of  humanity  is  con- 
cerned, there  can  only  be  one  choice — Latin 
civilization  is  classical  civilization.  The  great- 
est writers  among  the  Germans  themselves  have 
always  recognized  this.  Goethe  and  Schopen- 
hauer, Heine  and  Nietzsche,  all  looked  to 
France,  rather  than  to  the  Fatherland,  as  the 
spiritual  hope  of  humanity;  as  the  country  of 

30 


A   WAR   OF   IDEAS 

true  distinction  and  true  culture.  To  France 
and  to  Italy !  And  what  would  become  of 
France  and  Italy  if  Germany  and  Austria  con- 
quered in  this  war?  The  very  character  and 
inherent  implication  of  the  German  Idea — this 
Idea  of  an  efficient  State-Machine  forcing  its 
"higher  interests"  upon  humanity — suggests 
what  would  happen.  Looking  at  this  whole 
struggle  from  a  completely  outside  point  of 
view,  from  what  one  might  call  a  planetary 
point  of  view,  it  would  surely  be  obvious  that 
the  future  of  human  culture  were  more  assured 
in  the  possession  of  an  alliance  between  Sla- 
vonic and  Latin  and  Anglo-Saxon  traditions 
than  in  the  predominance  of  one  tradition  alone, 
the  tradition  and  Idea  of  the  Teutonic  race? 
England  with  her  great  Sea-Empire  and  Russia 
with  her  great  Land-Empire  come  forward,  in 
this  struggle,  as  the  guardians  and  protectors  of 
that  classical  Latin  tradition  the  loss  of  which, 
or  any  serious  blow  to  which,  would  be  more 
detrimental  to  the  world,  as  a  felicitous  and 
gracious  place  to  live  in,  than  anything  which 
could  possibly  happen.  Whatever  happens,  this 
great  Latin  tradition  must  be  protected  and  de- 
fended ;  for,  as  long  as  it  lasts,  no  purely 
"efficient"  and  "mechanical"  ideal  can  override 
the  beauty  and  dignity  and  grace  of  life. 

We  are,  by  degrees,  it  will  be  seen,  formulat- 
ing and  analyzing  the  real  content  of  this  com- 
plex "Idea"  of  the  Allies,  which,  in  this  world- 
war,  is  struggling  to  defeat  the  simpler  "Idea" 
of  the  Germans.     Let  us  see  how  much  further 

31 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

we  can  go.  It  is  surely  unnecessary,  for  the 
purposes  of  arguing  with  an  American  pubUc, 
to  emphasize  to  any  great  extent  what  England 
and  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  stand  for.  The  pres- 
ent writer,  however,  is  not  disinclined  to  sym- 
pathize with  those  Americans  who  disdain  this 
perpetual  looking  across  to  England;  those 
Americans  who  feel  that  after  the  great  tides  of 
immigration  are  over,  America,  in  a  wonderful 
fusion  of  all  her  children,  will  represent  a  com- 
pletely new  ideal,  not  necessarily  more  English 
than  it  is  Russian,  say,  or  French,  or  even  Ger- 
man. But  this  hope  of  the  future,  this  wonder- 
ful Utopian  blending  of  the  old  races  into  a 
great  new  race,  has  hardly  yet  begun  to  mani- 
fest itself.  It  will  manifest  itself.  No  one  can 
doubt  that.  New  economic  conditions,  new 
political  and  climatic  conditions ;  nay !  and  the 
much  more  subtle  psychological  atmosphere  of 
the  New  World,  are  bound  ultimately  to  produce 
it.  The  interesting  question  emerges :  what, 
when  it  is  produced,  will  be  its  character?  Will 
it,  when  it  is  produced,  have  an  ideal  more  in 
sympathy  with  the  present  complex  ideal  of  the 
Allies,  or  more  in  sympathy  with  the  present 
simple  ideal  of  the  Germans?  This  is  a  ques- 
tion very  difficult  to  answer  at  this  moment, 
and  certainly  one  that  cannot  be  answered  either 
by  Professor  Miinsterberg,  with  his  definitely 
German  attitude,  or  by  Mr.  Eliot,  with  his 
definitely  Anglo-Saxon  one.  To  answer  it  one 
would  have  to  discover  the  opinion  of  the  most 
evasive  persons  in  the  United  States,  the  per- 

32 


A  WAR  OF  IDEAS 

sons  who  are  neither  Pro-German,  Pro-Slav, 
neither  Pro-English  nor  Pro-Irish — the  opinion, 
in  fact,  of  the  real  American. 

The  mention  of  the  Irish  race  compels  one 
to  pause  for  a  moment  and  consider  the  result 
of  the  victory  of  the  Allies  in  so  far  as  it  affects 
the  oppressed  nationalities.  Three  races  have 
especially  suffered  in  the  past  from  the  tyranny 
of  Russia  and  England.  The  Poles  and  the  Jews 
from  that  of  the  former ;  the  Irish  from  that 
of  the  latter.  Some  Americans  might  be 
tempted  to  ask,  what  have  the  Celts  to  gain 
from  the  victory  of  the  Allies?  Now  it  is  quite 
clear  that  if  the  Celts,  whether  Irish  or  other- 
wise, have  any  moral  and  spiritual  affinity  at 
all,  it  is  with  France.  The  French  themselves 
have  Celtic  blood,  and  history  has  created,  ever 
since  the  Stuart  times,  a  hundred  links  of  sym- 
pathy between  France  and  Ireland.  The  Celtic 
race  has  always  been  one  of  the  quickest  and 
most  sensitive,  among  European  races,  to  under- 
stand the  spirit  of  the  Latin  tradition,  its  dignity 
and  its  charm.  It  is  inconceivable  and  unthink- 
able that  the  peculiar  poetry  and  imagination  of 
the  Celtic  temper  should  have  anything  to  gain 
from  the  triumph  of  Germany.  On  the  con- 
trary, no  race  in  the  world  would  experience 
more  spiritual  suffering,  or  a  deeper  intellectual 
and  moral  outrage,  from  such  a  triumph,  than 
would  the  Celtic  race.  To  the  Celt  the  Philis- 
tinism and  vulgarity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  bad 
enough.  Against  these  things  he  has  always 
rebelled.     Against  these  things  he  is   rebelling 

3  33 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

still.  But  what  of  the  arrogant  efficiency  of  the 
Germans?  What  of  this  German  State-Ma- 
chine, overriding  so  roughly  the  margins  of  life, 
drilling  and  organizing  so  drastically?  Free  the 
Celt  from  the  dominance  of  the  Saxon,  by  all 
means.  But  to  free  him  from  that,  only  to 
plunge  him  beneath  the  iron  heel  of  Teutonic 
efficiency,  is  to  offer  him  Hell  in  place  of  Purga- 
tory. As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  logic  of  the 
situation,  the  logic  of  the  great  complex  Idea 
for  which  the  Allies  are  fighting,  will  do  more 
to  free  Ireland  from  Saxon  domination  than  the 
struggle  of  two  centuries  has  done.  It  is  not 
for  nothing  that  the  first  month  of  the  war  was 
hardly  over  before  a  Home  Rule  Bill  wrote  it- 
self upon  the  statute  book.  Ulster,  a  little 
nation  within  a  little  nation,  will  no  doubt  re- 
ceive her  rights — it  is  in  accordance  with  the 
Idea  of  this  war  that  she  should  receive  them — 
but  they  will  not  be  at  the  expense  of  Celtic 
Ireland. 

And  Poland?  If  this  war  of  Ideas  has  no 
other  result  than  to  liberate  and  re-establish  the 
Polish  nation  it  will  not  be  a  war  wasted.  The 
partition  of  Poland  was  one  of  the  greatest 
crimes  of  history.  It  is  a  crime  that  is  being 
paid  for  now.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether 
Russia  will  keep  her  present  word,  and 
whether  the  Polish  nation  shall  really  rise  out 
of  the  dust.  It  is  the  opinion  of  the  present 
writer  that  Russia  will  keep  her  word,  carried 
forward,  she  also,  by  the  organic  power  of  the 
great  Idea  for  which  she  fights.    And  if  Russia 

34 


A  WAR   OF  IDEAS 

keeps  her  word  to  the  Poles,  what  right  have 
we  to  assume  that  she  will  break  it  to  the  Jews  ? 
The  Jews  have  indeed  come  forward,  with 
especial  prominence,  both  in  Russia  and  Eng- 
land in  support  of  this  war.  And  they  will  have 
their  reward.  Indeed  the  mere  fact  that  the 
majority  of  the  Jewish  race  all  over  the  world 
is  so  strongly  against  them  should  make  the 
Germans  pause  and  think.  The  Jews  have  al- 
ways been  a  sort  of  intellectual  weather-vane, 
a  kind  of  psychic  barometer,  of  the  spiritual 
forces  of  European  civilization.  They  have 
need  to  be.  It  is  their  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion that  makes  them  so.  And  now  if  the  Jews 
of  Russia  answer  so  heroically  to  the  call  of  their 
compatriots  it  is  because  a  deep  instinct  tells 
them  that,  in  so  doing,  they  will  win  their  law- 
ful place  in  the  country  of  their  birth.  After 
this  war  there  will  be  no  more  Pogroms ! 

We  are  gradually,  it  will  be  seen,  approach- 
ing a  position  from  which  it  will  be  possible  to 
define  the  complex  Idea  for  which  the  Allies  are 
fighting.  I  am  not  at  present  going  to  speak 
of  this  matter  from  its  negative  side.  I  mean 
from  the  side  from  which  the  Idea  of  the  Allies 
appears  merely  as  fierce  opposition  to  the  Idea 
of  the  Germans.  That  point  we  will  discuss 
later,  when  we  come  to  analyze  this  modern 
German  culture,  of  which  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  has  so  much  to  say.  Let  us  only  remark 
here  that  there  must  be  something  not  only  in 
the  content  of  this  culture,  but  in  the  form  of  its 
presentment,  peculiarly  irritating  to  the  sensibility 

35 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

of  the  world  at  large,  otherwise  there  would 
scarcely  have  arisen  this  furious  and  angry  out- 
burst against  it.  Culture  may  be,  as  the  great 
cosmopolitan,  and  not  particularly  Pro-German, 
Goethe,  held  it  was,  a  thing  completely  outside 
the  passions  and  race-instincts  of  nations;  or  it 
may  be,  as  Nietzsche  seems  to  have  regarded 
it,  a  thing  of  European  value,  as  opposed  to  the 
mysticism  of  the  East;  or,  finally,  it  may  be,  as 
the  Russian,  Dostoievsky,  or  the  Frenchman, 
Maurice  Barres,  consider  it,  a  thing  essentially 
idiomatic  and  racial,  a  thing  springing  out  of  a 
certain  soil  and  linked  to  a  certain  tradition ; 
our  point  at  present  is,  that  whatever  the 
content  of  modern  German  culture  may  be  to- 
day, there  must  be  something  unlovely,  some- 
thing ungracious,  something  contrary  to  the 
urbane  and  tactful  spirit  of  all  true  humanism, 
about  the  manner  of  its  presentation ;  else  the 
world  would  not  have  rebelled  so  savagely 
against  it.  Did  the  German  race  possess  any- 
thing, in  their  boasted  modern  culture,  approxi- 
mating to  what  Matthew  Arnold  calls  "sweet 
reasonableness,"  the  German  race  would  not 
find  itself  with  so  many  enemies  today.  These 
things,  some  of  my  readers  may  say,  are  little 
things  and  of  small  importance.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  from  these  little  things  that  true 
culture  in  the  long  run  will  be  judged. 

Professor  Miinsterberg  is  astonished  at  the 
outburst  of  dislike  for  the  German  race  which 
this  war  has  produced  all  over  the  world.  He 
vaguely  thinks  that  it  has  something  to  do  with 

36 


A   WAR   OF   IDEAS 

reports  of  German  barbarity,  with  the  fright- 
fulness  of  what,  as  he  puts  it,  war  always  must 
be.  The  professor,  we  think,  is  mistaken  in  this 
explanation.  Much  indeed  has  been  made  of 
these  reports;  but  behind  all  reports,  true  or 
false,  behind  the  whole  melancholy  discussion, 
lies  the  fact  that  there  is  something  in  the 
manner  of  the  German  presentation  of  its  "cul- 
ture" which  irritates  the  natural  human  soul, 
whether  cultivated  or  not,  over  the  entire  world. 
Is  it  only,  for  instance,  because  that  mysterious 
country  lies  so  near  the  Indian  Empire  that  the 
Grand  Llama  of  Tibet  is  now  praying  for  the 
success  of  the  AUies?  Is  it  only  because  King 
George  the  Fifth  visited  Delhi  that  half  the 
princes  of  India  are  coming  forward  with  their 
treasure  and  their  lives?  Is  it  only  because 
the  Tsar  of  Russia  cried  aloud  to  the  god  of 
the  Slavonic  race  from  the  temple-steps  of  Mos- 
cow that  the  chief  of  the  Nihilists  in  Paris  is 
making  his  way  home — with  no  promises  from 
the  police? 

Professor  Munsterberg  is  perfectly  justified 
in  calling  to  our  attention  the  astonishing  hero- 
ism of  the  German  and  Austrian  people  in  thus 
challenging  the  whole  world.  To  disparage  this 
heroism  would  be  at  once  cowardly  and  absurd. 
The  great  Teutonic  race  is  now  showing  itself, 
whether  in  victory  or  defeat,  worthy  and  more 
than  worthy  of  its  formidable  ancestors  who 
broke  the  power  of  ancient  Rome.  Much  that 
is  written  and  spoken  in  England  and  America 
today    does     insufficient    justice    to    this    tre- 


37 


'MaOHV 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

mendous  heroism,  to  this  Titanic  effort  to  Ger- 
manize the  world  against  incredible  odds.  The 
present  writer  finds  it  difficult  to  follow  the  elo- 
quent reasoning  of  so  many  great  Anglo-Saxon 
publicists,  who  tell  us  that  the  German  people 
are  now,  as  it  were,  like  driven  sheep ;  forced 
into  battle  against  their  will  by  a  designing  gov- 
ernment. That  the  majority  of  the  German 
people  hold  the  view  that  in  this  particular  war 
they  are  the  attacked  and  not  the  aggressors  is 
no  doubt  perfectly  true.  But  at  the  same  time 
we  feel  equally  confident  that  the  majority  of 
the  German  people  are  convinced  in  their  hearts, 
or  were  convinced  before  the  war  began,  that 
the  destiny  of  the  German  State,  of  the  Ger- 
man system,  and  the  German  culture  is  nothing 
more  or  less  than  the  domination  of  Europe. 
It  is  natural  enough  that  in  Germany,  as  in  Eng- 
land, the  thoughts  of  the  ordinary  person  should 
turn  rather  to  the  immediate  and  superficial 
causes  of  the  war  than  to  those  that  lie  deeper. 
To  the  ordinary  German,  one  may  suppose,  the 
immediate  cause  of  the  war  would  present  it- 
self as  the  jealousy  of  England,  the  revenge  of 
France,  and  the  diabolical  machinations  of 
'  Russia. 

One  of  the  curious  psychological  results  of 
the  breaking  out  of  the  war-spirit  seems  to  be 
a  tendency  on  the  part  of  all  concerned  to 
justify  their  country's  action  on  any  sort  or 
kind  of  moral  ground.  Germany,  it  appears,  in 
spite  of  her  philosophic  culture,  is  just  as  liable 
to   this   psychological   tendency   as   any   of   her 

38 


A  WAR   OF  IDEAS 

enemies.  Indeed,  the  only  country  which,  in  this 
dramatic  situation,  has  completely  preserved  her 
analytic  coolness  of  head  is  France.  But  that 
is,  after  all,  what  one  would  have  expected. 
The  French  intellect  is  the  least  addicted  to  self- 
deception  of  all  the  intellects  of  Europe. 

But  we  are  digressing  from  our  present 
theme,  which  is  the  real  nature  of  the  world- 
wide "Idea"  which  binds  the  Allies  together 
against  these  infatuated  and  heroic  Teutons. 

This  Idea  presents  itself  in  the  first  place  as 
the  Idea  of  the  rights  of  individuals  against  the 
State-Machine.  It  was  no  doubt  quite  as  easy 
for  the  Paris  anarchists,  the  Russian  Nihilists, 
and  the  English  radicals,  to  join  enthusiastically 
in  the  war  as  for  the  German  Socialists.  For, 
whereas  one  can  conceive  the  German  Socialists 
finding  something  not  altogether  uncongenial  in 
the  doctrine  of  an  omnipotent  State-Machine, 
one  can  clearly  see  that  all  individualistic 
thinkers  must  tend  towards  the  cause  of  the 
Allies. 

The  idea  of  the  rights  of  the  individual,  of 
the  rights  of  humanity,  as  against  the  dominance 
of  the  State  is  an  idea  which  brings  closely  to- 
gether both  French  and  English  tradition.  It 
is  indeed  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  idea  of 
the  French  Revolution.  It  is  also  the  older 
idea  embodied  in  the  English  Magna  Charta 
and  in  the  American  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence. This  is  that  great  and  divine  idea  of 
liberty,  larger  and  more  human  than  the  special 
traditions  of  any  particular  race,  that  idea  for 

39 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

the  sake  of  which  Germany  herself  withstood 
Napoleon,  and  Italy  shook  off  the  yoke  of 
Austria.  This  is  an  idea  which  in  spite  of  the 
War  of  Liberation  Germany  has  been  singu- 
larly slow  to  learn.  It  has  never  been  popular 
in  Prussia.  Bismarck  scouted  it.  And  the  in- 
fluence of  Prussia  and  Bismarck  upon  Germany 
may  be  commended  to  Professor  Miinsterberg 
as  worthy  a  psychological  chapter  in  itself.  The 
great  German  poet  Heine,  who  called  himself 
"a  soldier  in  the  cause  of  the  Liberation  of 
Humanity,"  and  who  knew  Germany  at  least 
as  well  as  Professor  Munsterberg,  said  once, 
that  while  the  Englishman  loved  liberty  as  his 
lawful  wife,  and  the  Frenchman  as  his  loving 
mistress,  Germany  loved  her  as  an  old  grand- 
mother, consigned  to  a  remote  place  in  the 
kitchen,  never  quite  forgotten,  but  not  brought 
forward  very  prominently  into  the  light! 

The  idea  of  the  rights  of  the  individual 
against  the  State-Machine  naturally  brings  with 
it,  as  a  logical  corollary,  the  idea  of  the  rights 
of  small  nations  and  oppressed  races  against  the 
great  empires.  Here,  no  doubt,  France  putting 
aside  the  Grand  Monarch  and  Napoleon,  has  a 
clearer  record  than  either  England  or  Russia. 
But  since,  by  a  kind  of  special  providence,  or, 
to  speak  more  plainly,  by  reason  of  their  own 
courage,  Servia  and  Belgium  have  played  so 
large  a  part  in  this  war,  and  in  so  doing  have 
called  the  world's  attention  to  the  importance 
of  the  little  nations,  it  seems  inevitable  that  the 
logic  of  the  situation  will  force  upon  both  the 

40 


A   WAR   OF   IDEAS 

great  empires  a  more  gentle  and  considerate 
treatment  of  the  races  under  their  protection. 
England  has  already  in  a  measure  learned  this 
lesson;  and  learned  it  by  bitter  experience. 
Russia  will  learn  it  also.  In  this  way  the  world 
will  come  to  owe  an  immense  debt  to  both 
Servia  and  Belgium.  For  it  is  the  heroism  of 
Servia  and  Belgium,  in  relation  to  this  war,  that 
is  already  widening  the  Anglo-French  idea  of 
the  value  of  liberty,  and  making  it  a  racial  as 
well  as  a  political  idea. 

Nor  will  it  be  only  a  question  of  the  little 
nations.  One  very  important  aspect  of  the  Idea 
for  which  the  Allies  are  found  to  be  fighting  is 
the  principle  of  race-boundaries  as  distinct  from 
artificial  ones.  Austria-Hungary  is  of  all  the 
European  nations  the  one  which  has  trans- 
gressed this  principle  the  most  flagrantly,  though 
the  grand  historic  example  of  the  abominable 
breaking  up  of  natural  boundaries  is,  of  course, 
Poland.  It  seems  more  and  more  clear  that  one 
of  the  greatest  results  of  this  war  if  the  Allies 
win  will  be  a  drastic  change  of  the  map  in 
accordance  with  natural  and  racial  boundaries. 
If  this  really  occurs  it  will  be  a  sufficient  answer 
to  those  who  speak  of  uselessness,  insanity,  and 
ruin.  It  is  not  for  anyone,  least  of  all  for  argu- 
mentative philosophers,  far  from  the  front,  to 
deny  the  atrocious  waste  and  tragic  miseries  of 
war;  but  it  must  be  made  clear  that  this  waste 
and  this  misery  must  be  turned  to  good  issues 
for  the  benefit  of  the  world.  This  the  Allies 
must  see  to ;  this  the  Allies  must  be  driven  to, 

41 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

by  every  possible  exertion  of  the  public  opinion 
of  the  non-combatant  nations. 

Fortunately  when  once  Ideas  become  battle- 
cries,  the  logic  of  events  carries  the  issues  far. 
It  is  possible  that  more  good  than  any  one  yet 
guesses  will  emerge  out  of  this  hell.  It  must  be 
made  to  emerge.  The  neutral  nations  will  have 
to  bend  their  influence  to  nothing  less.  And 
how  good  it  will  be  indeed  for  the  world  if  the 
Idea  for  which  the  AUies  are  fighting  becomes, 
as  it  seems  likely  to  become,  more  and  more  in- 
volved with  the  destiny  of  the  smaller  nations 
and  races !  A  great  question  is  at  stake  here,  a 
question  concerned  with  the  very  nature  and 
implication  of  culture ;  and  it  does  not  look  as 
though  this  question  were  going  to  be  decided 
according  to  the  view  of  Professor  Miinster- 
berg. 

Is  culture  a  purely  impersonal,  anti-racial,  un- 
traditional  thing — or  is  it  bound  up  indissolubly 
with  local  and  national  characteristics? 

Certain  very  great  men  have  taken  the  former 
view ;  but  the  latter  is  surely  the  one  that  ap- 
peals most  to  the  natural  instincts  of  humanity. 
Culture  is  too  personal,  too  full  of  local  color, 
too  dramatic,  too  organic  and  spontaneous,  to 
lend  itself,  with  good  results,  to  the  deracinating 
process  of  inter-nationalism. 

All  the  great  epochs  of  art,  of  literature,  of 
music,  have  been  epochs  when  the  racial  spirit, 
very  often  the  racial  spirit  of  quite  a  small 
nation,  has  asserted  itself  and  found  an  articu- 
late, idiomatic  voice.     Cosmopolitan  art,  cosmo- 

42 


A   WAR   OF  IDEAS 

politan  literature,  cosmopolitan  music,  are  al- 
ways forced  and  artificial,  and  often  trivial  and 
thin,  compared  with  the  art,  literature,  and 
music  which  springs  from  a  race's  unique  soul. 

That  is  the  worst  of  these  great  modern  em- 
pires, from  an  aesthetic  point  of  view.  How  the 
new  German  Empire,  if  it  were  triumphant, 
would  go  to  work  to  force  "German  culture" 
upon  the  world  we  can  easily  imagine.  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  modern  German  culture  is 
more  cosmopolitan  than  that  of  any  country. 
Treitschke  and  Bernhardi  make  of  that  a  rea- 
son, and  doubtless  Professor  Miinsterberg 
would  also,  for  forcing  it  upon  the  rest.  From 
our  point  of  view,  such  shallow  cosmopolitan- 
ism proves  not  the  strength  but  the  weakness 
of  modern  German  culture.  For  it  is  precisely 
against  this  thin,  colorless,  swaggering,  imperial 
art  that  the  spirit  of  the  smaller  races  in  Europe 
is  protesting. 

Modern  German  culture  is  not  classical  in  the 
Goethean  sense.  It  is  not  European  in  the 
Nietzschean  sense.  It  is  at  once  provincial  and 
cosmopolitan.  It  has  the  bad  qualities  of  a  race 
that  has  refused,  since  Goethe  and  Nietzsche,  to 
learn  the  "great  style"  from  those  Mediter- 
ranean masters  who  have  the  key  to  the  only 
inter-national  tradition  worth  anything,  and  it 
has  also  the  bad  qualities  of  an  aggressive  pe- 
dantic cosmopolitanism  which  is  not  worth  any- 
thing at  all.  What  is  today  most  attractive  in 
German  literature  is  what  is  most  German,  not 
what  is  most  cosmopolitan.     It  is,  however,  one 

43 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

of  the  most  striking  peculiarities  of  German  cul- 
ture that  it  delights  in  the  pedantic  substitution 
of  what  is  vaguely  cosmopolitan,  for  what  is 
native  and  of  the  soil.  It  is  indeed  this  power 
of  cultural  assimilation  which  makes  it  possible 
for  Germans  to  adapt  themselves  more  quickly 
than  any  other  race  to  the  manners  and  customs 
of  a  foreign  country.  How  much  easier,  for 
instance,  is  it  for  Germans  to  become  national- 
ized Americans  than  for  Frenchmen  or  Eng- 
lishmen or  Italians !  We  are  prepared  never- 
theless to  maintain  that  so  far  from  this  en- 
cyclopedic flexibility  conducing  to  the  highest 
culture,  it  is  on  the  contrary  a  serious  hindrance 
to  it.  The  higher  culture  is  not  cosmopolitan 
and  international.  It  is  racial  and  organic.  The 
supremely  cultivated  man  is  not  the  man  of 
encyclopedic  knowledge  but  the  man  who  pos- 
sesses the  key  to  distinction  of  style;  and  dis- 
tinction of  style  is  a  thing  that  springs  up,  like 
a  flower  or  a  tree,  spontaneously  out  of  the  soil. 

The  Idea  which  the  Allies  represent  in  this 
war,  as  the  champions  of  the  smaller  nations 
and  races,  is  the  Idea  of  local  and  racial  tradi- 
tion, of  local  and  racial  poetry  and  art  and  re- 
ligion, as  opposed  to  this  cold,  hard,  unsympa- 
thetic, encyclopedic  culture,  which  may  be  called 
imperial  or  cosmopolitan. 

The  British  Empire,  mindful  of  its  former 
blunders,  has  recently  inaugurated  a  more 
sympathetic  regime  in  Ireland  and  Africa  and 
India.  The  success  of  this  new  attitude,  the 
true     Liberal     and     Gladstonian     attitude,     as 

44 


A   WAR   OF   IDEAS 

opposed  to  the  imperial  one,  has  been  proved 
by  the  devotion  of  Irishmen  and  Indians  and  «-i 
Boers  to  the  common  cause  of  the  Allies.  Had 
the  English  method  remained  in  its  stiff  Im-'^  "^^ 
perial  fetters,  had  it  remained  Imperialism,  a  la 
Mr.  Kipling,  the  cause  of  the  AlHes  would  have 
lost  this  inspiring  support.  The  bad  Imperial- 
ism of  Mr.  Kipling  has  many  points  of  re- 
semblance to  the  bad  Imperialism  of  the  Ger- 
man ideal;  and  it  is  a  splendid  victory  for  the 
wiser  English  spirit,  the  spirit  that  is  at  once 
what  may  be  called  Tory-Socialist  and  what 
may  be  called  Democratic-Gladstonian,  that  it 
has  in  recent  years  completely  overcome  the 
Rhodes-Chamberlain-Kipling  Imperialistic  ideal. 
And  what  has  been  done  in  England  will,  we 
hope  and  believe,  be  done  in  Russia.  Every- 
thing points  to  this.  Russia  has  entered  this 
struggle  as  the  champion,  not  of  Russian  Im- 
perialism, but  of  Slavonic  tradition.  It  is  as 
the  natural  and  religious  head  of  the  Slavonic 
races  rather  than  as  the  chief  of  an  autocratic 
bureaucracy  that  the  Tsar  has  called  his  legions 
into  the  field.  If,  as  the  Indians  believe,  the 
Idea  of  the  Allies  will  push  England  on  to 
further  liberation  of  India,  and  fuller  sympathy 
with  Indian  racial  traditions,  the  Idea  of  the 
AHies  will  also  push  Russia  on,  to  the  further 
liberation  of  Poland,  and  fuller  sympathy  with 
Polish  racial  traditions.  The  German  Idea  im- 
plies the  assumption  that  not  only  German  rule, 
but  German  culture,  must  be  forced  upon  the 
nations;  because  it  is,  in  its  intrinsic  nature,  the 

45 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

highest  culture,  and  the  best  culture  for  hu- 
manity. This  is  precisely  what  England  is  find- 
ing a  false  and  pernicious  doctrine.  It  is  the 
old  Kipling  method ;  but  it  is  not  the  method  of 
the  new  Gladstonian  Liberalism  which  now 
dominates  the  English  system. 

There  is  a  certain  shallow  plausibility  lent 
to  the  German  Idea  by  the  very  fact — which  we 
have  just  noted — of  the  German  tendency 
towards  encyclopedic  erudition  and  cosmo- 
politan colorlessness. 

The  German  Idea  is  to  force  this  pedantic, 
laborious,  scholastic,  scientifically  efficient  but 
spiritually  uninspiring  cosmopolitanism  upon  the 
world,  to  the  destruction  of  organic  and  spon- 
taneous race-instincts. 

Massive,  patient,  and  efficient  though  the 
German  intellect  is,  it  would  be  a  vast  calamity 
to  the  world  if  this  culture,  so  arrogant,  so 
inflexible,  so  unsympathetic,  were  thrust  upon 
us  by  the  drill-sergeant  and  the  machine.  Out 
of  this  great  war  of  Ideas,  out  of  this  war  so 
devilish  and  appalling  in  its  attendant  miseries, 
good  will  indeed  result  if  this  German  Idea,  this 
hard,  drastic,  Imperialistic  Idea,  with  its  brutal 
cosmopolitan  culture,  is  crushed  forever! 

How  powerful,  how  world-shaking,  is  the 
evolution  of  Ideas !  The  conversion  of  Mr. 
Kipling  himself  will  be,  and  is  already,  an 
amusing  psychological  spectacle!  The  Ameri- 
can world,  the  old  Jeffersonian  American  tra- 
dition, has  already  felt  great  suspicion  of  what 
is  called  the  "New  Imperialism."     Well!     The 

46 


A   WAR   OF  IDEAS 

New  Imperialism  is  already  defeated.  It  is  de- 
feated with  the  defeat  of  Germany.  It  is  de- 
feated with  the  triumph  of  the  Latin  and  Celtic 
races.  It  is  defeated  by  the  emerging  of  the 
Slav.  The  New  Imperialism  is  now  the  Old 
Imperialism.  It  is  superseded,  revoked,  rele- 
gated to  the  historic  rubbish-heap.  The  New 
Imperialism  both  in  England  and  America  al- 
ways hated  the  Latin  and  Celtic  races.  It 
regarded  the  Latin  and  Celtic  races  as  its  great 
enemy.  It  accused  them  of  being  over-civilized, 
over-imaginative,  and,  above  all,  inefficient.  The 
Latin  and  Celtic  races,  it  said,  were  too  much 
interested  in  local  tradition,  were  too  absurdly 
passionate  in  defense  of  local  traditions;  were, 
in  fact,  too  poetic,  too  imaginative,  too  super- 
stitious for  the  hard,  positive  facts  of  our 
modern  world.  "Let  us,"  the  New  Imperiahsm 
said,  "get  rid  of  this  fanciful  nonsense,  of  this 
mystical  balderdash.  Let  us  get  rid  of  these 
shams,  and  return  to  the  authentic  facts,  the 
facts  of  science,  efficiency,  organization,  and 
downright  unsentimental  force." 

The  answer  to  this  has  been  the  present  war: 
this  war,  wherein  the  Allies,  by  means  of  the 
spirit  and  passion  drawn  from  their  "mystical 
balderdash"  are  driving,  even  now,  back  towards 
its  Fatherland,  the  great  Engine  of  Efficiency ! 

If  the  German  Idea  implies  the  forcing  of 
an  efficient  but  unimaginative  cosmopolitan 
culture  upon  the  world,  the  Idea  of  the  Allies 
implies  what  one  might  call  the  ideal  of  the 
federated  traditions.    The  new  world  which  we 

47 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

look  to  see  emerge  from  the  defeat  of  Germany 
will  be  a  world  where  the  various  customs, 
religions,  manners,  literatures,  ideals,  aspira- 
tions, traditions,  with  all  their  local  interest  and 
color,  will  have  received  a  volcanic  stimulus,  and 
will  be  free  to  develop,  as  they  ought  to  develop, 
side  by  side,  and  on  their  native  ground,  un- 
disturbed by  imperialistic  interference. 

This  we  trust  will  happen  in  India.  This  we 
trust  will  happen  in  Persia.  This  we  trust  will 
happen  in  Ireland,  Poland,  Belgium,  Servia, 
Denmark,  and  wherever  else  the  dominant  Idea 
of  the  Allies  has  been  carried  by  victory!  The 
war  will  indeed  have  been  wasted,  will  indeed 
have  been  vain  insanity,  if  the  Allies  do  not  see 
to  it  that  these  changes  take  place. 

Fortunately  the  war  is  not  a  war  fought  alone 
by  such  imperial  nations  as  England  and  Russia. 
France  is  in  it ;  France  is  committed  to  it.  And 
it  is  inconceivable  that  France  should  allow  the 
intellectual  and  spiritual  aspects  of  the  issue  to 
lapse  at  the  last  hour. 

We  are  now  therefore  in  a  position  from 
which  it  is  possible  to  sum  up  the  results  we 
have  obtained.  This  terrible  war,  caused  pri- 
marily by  the  natural  egoism  of  races,  has  be- 
come, by  the  logic  of  events,  and  by  the  invisible 
pressure  of  the  system  of  things,  a  war  of  Ideas. 

The  Idea  of  Germany  is  to  force  upon  the 
world,  by  means  of  an  omnipotent  and  irre- 
sistible State-Machine,  a  certain  hard,  scientific, 
unimaginative,  and  efficient  culture. 

The  Idea  of  the  Allies  is  to  protect  the  indi- 

48 


A   WAR  OF  IDEAS 

vidual  against  the  State,  the  Httle  nations 
against  the  empires,  and  the  drama,  color,  pas- 
sion, beauty,  and  tradition  of  the  various  races 
of  the  earth,  against  a  monotonous  and  murder- 
ous uniformity! 


49 


CHAPTER  HI. 

GERMAN  CULTURE  VERSUS  RUSSIAN 
CULTURE. 

Professor  Miinsterberg  is  of  opinion  that 
this  war  is  ultimately  a  war  between  Ger- 
many and  Russia,  between  Teuton  and 
Slav.  He  regards  the  entrance  of  jealous  Eng- 
land and  revengeful  France  as  trifling  by-issues. 
The  real  matter  at  stake  is  between  the  West 
and  the  East  of  Europe.  We  think  that  there 
is  much  to  be  said  for  this  view.  For  although 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  presence  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  the  Celt,  the  Frenchman,  and  possibly 
the  Italian,  materially  affects,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  nature  of  the  Allies'  Idea;  it  is  quite  true 
that,  in  its  final  summing  up,  the  war  seems 
most  especially  to  be  a  war  between  Slav  and 
Teuton.  But  Professor  Miinsterberg  gives  to 
this  aspect  of  the  matter  a  color  against  which 
it  is  necessary  to  protest  with  all  our  energy. 
He  assumes,  in  true  German  fashion,  that  for 
Germany  to  be  defeated  by  Russia  would  mean 
the  defeat  of  culture  by  barbarism.  "The  Ger- 
mans know,"  says  he,  "what  a  German  defeat 
must  mean  to  the  ideal  civilization  of  the  world. 
The  culture  of  Germany  would  be  trampled 
down  by  half-cultured  Tartars."  And  again : 
"The  sympathies  of  the  American  nation  ought 
not  to  be  whipped  into  the  camp  of  the  Cos- 

50 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

sacks.  Americans  ought  not  to  rejoice  when  the 
uncultured  hordes  of  the  East  march  over  the 
frontier."  Professor  Miinsterberg  is,  however, 
too  much  of  a  psychologist  to  confine  himself 
to  these  cheap  references  to  Tartars  and  Cos- 
sacks. In  his  chapter  entitled  "The  Russians" 
he  attempts  to  analyze  the  real  difference  be- 
tween this  German  culture,  upon  which  the 
future  of  civilization  depends,  and  this  strange, 
foreign,  dangerous  culture  of  the  Slavonic  race. 
His  admissions  are  extremely  important,  and 
are  themselves  sufficient  to  answer  the  more 
superficial  opposition  to  Russia,  which  some 
Anglo-Saxons,  as  well  as  Germans,  feel.  "The 
Slavic  world,"  he  says,  "is  full  of  deep  melan- 
cholic beauty,  of  devoted  loyalty,  of  religious 
democracy,  of  sincere  idealism.  The  harshness 
of  its  autocratic  regime  and  the  widespread 
corruption  of  its  upper  classes  are  unimportant 
compared  with  the  sterling  virtues  of  the  Rus- 
sian people.  Yet  the  Germans  feel  strongly 
that  a  fundamental  contrast  separates  the  Ger- 
man nation  from  the  Russian.  The  German 
culture  is  active  and  productive ;  the  Russian  is 
at  its  best  passive  and  uncreative.  The  Ger- 
man soul  is  full  of  sunshine;  there  is  something 
gloomy  and  oppressive  about  the  Russian  soul. 
This  inner  dcadness,  this  lack  of  productive 
energy,  is  in  no  way  contradictory  to  the  tre- 
mendous world-power  of  the  Russian  nation, 
organized  in  the  Tsar's  empire.  A  superstition 
binds  the  people  into  a  solid  mass  just  as  firmly 
as  any  liberal  ideas  bind  free  nations  like  Ger- 

51 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

many  and  America.  As  of  the  Germans  it  is 
true  of  the  Russians,  that  nation  and  Emperor 
are  one.  The  Romanoffs  do  not  force  the  peo- 
ple into  world-poHtics ;  they  are  only  the  instru- 
ment of  the  somber,  silent  masses  whose  ortho- 
dox belief  pushes  forward  to  subjugate  the 
world.  No  Teuton  can  coolly  deliberate  whether 
the  German  or  Russian  civilization  is  the  better. 
He  must  feel  that  one  is  progress  and  the  other 
regress,  that  one  is  cultural  blessing  and  the 
other  cultural  depravity,  that  one  is  life  and  the 
other  internal  death,  in  spite  of  external  colossal 
force  and  mystical  beauty." 

In  another  place  he  tells  us,  he  "spent  many 
a  night  in  radical  Russian  circles,  with  the  tea 
from  the  Samovar,  and  the  Russian  cigarettes, 
and  the  dreams  of  a  better  Russia.  But  all  were 
dreams,  full  of  sadness." 

Having  thus  quoted  Miinsterberg's  view  of 
the  difference  between  these  races  and  having 
noted  his  faith  in  the  German  soul  "full  of  sun- 
shine," let  us  see  how  far  his  estimate  of  the 
situation  covers  the  facts  of  this  complex  field. 
First  of  all  we  must  see  how  far  our  other  Ger- 
man authorities,  Treitschke  and  Bernhardi,  bear 
out  Professor  Miinsterberg's  words.  They  do 
indeed  bear  them  out  with  something  like  a 
vengeance,  though  it  must  be  confessed  that, 
in  their  point  of  view,  there  is  more  arrogance 
and    less    "sunshine"    than    in    the    professor's. 

"To  no  nation,  except  the  German,"  says  Bern- 
hardi, "has  it  been  given  to  enjoy  in  its  inner 
self  that  which  is  given  to  mankind  as  a  whole. 

52 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

We  often  see  in  other  nations  a  greater  intensity 
of  specialized  ability,  but  never  the  same  ca- 
pacity for  generalization  and  absorption.  It  is 
this  quality  which  specially  fits  us  for  the  leader- 
ship of  the  intellectual  world,  and  imposes  on 
us  the  obligation  to  maintain  that  position." 
And  again,  "From  the  point  of  view  of  civiliza- 
tion, it  is  imperative  to  preserve  the  German 
spirit,  and  by  so  doing  to  establish  'foci'  of  uni- 
versal culture.  If  we  wish  to  compete  further 
with  them  (the  other  nations),  a  policy  which 
our  population  and  our  civilization  both  entitle 
and  compel  us  to  adopt,  we  must  not  hold  back 
in  the  hard  struggle  for  the  sovereignty  of  the 
world." 

By  these  quotations  it  will  be  seen  that 
both  Miinsterberg  and  Bernhardi  hold  the  view 
that,  from  a  universal  standpoint,  German  cul- 
ture is  the  most  precious  thing  that  the  world 
possesses.  It  is  precisely  this  that  we  absolutely 
and  entirely  deny.  For  it  must  be  remembered 
that  when  they  speak  in  this  way  they  are  speak- 
ing of  modern  German  culture.  This  is  proved 
by  the  emphasis  laid  by  both  upon  positivity, 
science,  criticism,  efficiency,  organization,  in- 
ventive progress,  and  so  forth,  which  are  all 
characteristic,  not  of  the  old  sympathetic  ideal- 
istic Germany  of  the  days  of  Goethe  and  Heine, 
but  of  the  new  energetic,  industrial,  imperial 
Germany,  of  the  school  of  Bismarck,  Moltke, 
Treitschke,  and  Bernhardi. 

The  Franco-Prussian  war  had  a  terrific 
effect    upon    German    culture — an    efifect    from 

S3 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

which  the  world  is  still  suffering.  Bern- 
hardi  knows  this  perfectly  well  and  re- 
joices in  it.  Miinsterberg  must  also  know 
it  well,  but  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  he,  the 
gentle  Harvard  teacher,  can  rejoice  in  it.  What 
he  does  is,  really,  to  try  to  prove,  a  little  dis- 
ingenuously, that  there  has  been  no  radical 
change.  He  says  "the  neighbors  begrudged  this 
prosperity  of  the  Fatherland,  which  had  been 
weak  and  poor  and  through  centuries  satisfied 
with  songs  and  thoughts  and  dreams."  In  other 
words,  all  that  has  happened  is,  that  the  poetical 
and  idealistic  Germany  has  suddenly  become  a 
rich  and  industrial  nation,  without  losing  its 
"songs  and  thoughts  and  dreams."  But  alas! 
such  an  evolution  as  this  has  to  be  paid  for.  It 
is  not  only  Germany's  neighbors  who  have  re- 
gretted this  change.  Germany's  own  pro- 
foundest  thinker,  the  author  of  "Thus  spake 
Zarathustra,"  has  regretted  it.  This  Germany, 
of  "songs  and  thoughts  and  dreams,"  of  which 
Miinsterberg  speaks,  sounds  extremely  like  the 
Russia  he  condemns — this  sad,  mystical,  beauti- 
ful, mysterious  Russia,  whose  strange  and 
troubled  spirit  is  to  bring  such  a  darkening  of 
the  efficient  "sunshine"  of  the  German  soul. 
Professor  Miinsterberg  wilfully  confuses  the 
old  romantic  federated  Germany,  of  Jena  and 
Weimar,  of  Dresden  and  Munich,  with  the  new 
Imperialistic  Germany,  of  Potsdam  and  Berlin. 
The  Franco-Prussian  war  changed  everything. 
It  gave  a  new  direction  to  German  culture.  Be- 
fore  it,   German   culture   was   either   local   and 

54 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

traditional,  or  it  was  classical,  in  the  Lessing- 
Goethe  sense.  After  it,  it  became  scientific, 
efficient,  positive,  materialistic  and  pedantically 
overbearing.  Thus  when  the  professor  speaks 
of  the  East  Prussian  city  of  Immanuel  Kant 
being  ravaged  "by  Cossacks  with  their  Po- 
groms," he  gives  a  completely  false  picture  of 
the  situation.  What  really  confronts  the  pas- 
sion and  religion,  the  imagination  and  the  faith 
of  modern  Russia  when  it  enters  modern  Ger- 
many, is  not  the  philosophy  or  the  morality  of 
Immanuel  Kant,  but  something  altogether  dif- 
ferent. As  the  great  Nietzsche  says — this 
master-mind  to  whom  Professor  Miinsterberg 
does  not  once  allude — "There  are  simple  people 
in  some  corner  of  the  earth  today — perhaps  in 
Germany — who  are  disposed  to  believe  in  all 
seriousness  that  the  world  was  put  right  (he  is 
writing  in  1873)  two  years  ago,  and  that  all 
stern  and  gloomy  views  of  life  are  now  contra- 
dicted by  'facts.'  The  foundation  of  the  New 
German  Empire  is,  to  them,  the  decisive  blow 
that  annihilates  all  pessimistic  philosophers." 
Reading  these  words  of  Nietzsche,  written  forty 
years  ago,  one  cannot  help  thinking  of  what 
Professor  Miinsterberg  says  of  the  "sunshine" 
of  the  German  soul,  and  its  active,  positive, 
scientific  efficiency.  "Such  men"  (our  "sun- 
shine" philosophers),  Nietzsche  goes  on,  "have 
lost  the  last  remnant  of  feeling,  not  only  for 
philosophy,  but  also  for  religion,  and  have  put 
in  its  place  a  spirit  not  so  much  of  optimism  as 
of  journalism,  the  evil  spirit  that  broods  over 

55 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

the  day — and  the  daily  paper.  Every  philosophy 
that  believes  the  problem  of  the  universe  to  be 
shelved,  or  even  solved,  by  a  political  event,  is 
a  sham  philosophy.  There  have  been  in- 
numerable states  founded  since  the  beginning 
of  the  world;  that  is  an  old  story.  How  should 
a  political  innovation  manage  once  for  all  to 
make  a  contented  race  of  the  dwellers  on  this 
earth?  If  any  one  believes  in  his  heart  that  this 
is  possible,  he  should  report  himself  to  our 
authorities ;  he  really  deserves  to  be  a  professor 
of  philosophy  in  a  German  university."  Nietz- 
sche goes  on  to  speak  of  the  Idea  of  the  State. 
"A  man  who  thinks  State-service  to  be  his  high- 
est duty,  very  possibly  knows  no  higher  one ;  yet 
there  are  both  men  and  duties  in  a  region  be- 
yond— and  one  of  these  duties,  that  seems  to  me 
at  least  of  higher  value  than  state-service,  is  to 
destroy  stupidity  in  all  its  forms — and  this  par- 
ticular stupidity  among  them.  And  I  have  to 
do  with  a  class  of  men  whose  teleological  con- 
ceptions extend  further  than  the  well-being  of 
a  State;  I  mean  with  philosophers — and  only 
with  them  in  their  relation  to  culture,  which  is 
again  almost  independent  of  'the  good  of  the 
State.'  Of  the  many  links  that  make  up  the 
twisted  chain  of  humanity,  some  are  of  gold 
and  some  of  pewter.  How  does  the  philosopher 
of  our  time  regard  culture?  Quite  differently, 
I  assure  you,  from  the  professors  who  are  so 
content  with  their  new  state."  From  these  re- 
marks of  the  great  German  thinker  it  will  be  seen 
that  both  the  American  and  English  critics  who 

56 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

class  Nietzsche  so  thoughtlessly  with  Treitschke 
and  Bernhardi  have  hardly  so  much  as  looked 
into  his  work.  Nietzsche,  it  is  true,  denounces 
"Christian  morality" ;  but  the  modern  German 
military  philosopher  does  not  denounce  "Chris- 
tian morality."  He  calls  in  the  aid  both  of  God 
and  the  higher  ethics  to  support  his  Pan-German 
State.  There  was  indeed  something  that 
Nietzsche  hated  more  even  than  Christian 
morality,  and  that  was  this  very  "Philistine- 
culture"  which  modern  German  arms  are  seek- 
ing to  force  upon  the  world. 

How  much  they  make  of  "Science,"  these 
modern  apologists  for  Germany !  It  is  precisely 
because  of  this  progressive  "Science"  that 
Miinsterberg  finds  German  culture  so  superior 
to  the  Russian.  But  what  has  Nietzsche  to  say 
of  this  bragging  "Science"?  "Science  has  the 
same  relation  to  wisdom  as  current  morality  has 
to  holiness :  she  is  cold  and  dry,  loveless  and 
ignorant  of  any  deep  feeling  of  dissatisfaction 
and  longing — for  science  only  sees  the  problems 
of  knowledge,  and  suffering  is  something  ahen 
and  unintelHgible  to  her  world — though  no  less 
a  problem  for  that!"  No  wonder,  thinking  of 
modern  German  science  in  this  spirit,  Nietzsche 
found  himself  turning  away  from  Germany, 
turning  indeed  towards  Russia,  for  a  psycho- 
logical insight  that  should  go  deeper  and  further 
— that  should  have  less  perhaps  of  Professor 
Miinsterberg's  "sunshine"  in  its  soul,  but  more 
of  the  tragic  irony  of  life! 

It  may  be  true  that  by  many  portions  of  his 

57 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

work  Nietzsche  has  put  weapons  into  the  hands 
of  these  State-worshippers  and  force-worship- 
pers, but  it  is  altogether  untrue  that  he  belongs 
to  their  camp.  They  can  quote  from  him — as 
a  matter  of  fact  Bernhardi  often  quotes  from 
Goethe — but  he  is  not  of  their  company.  He  is 
of  the  company  of  Heraclitus  and  Heine.  His 
authors  are  Russian  and  French.  His  cities  are 
the  cities  of  the  Mediterranean.  The  culture 
that  Nietzsche  fought  for  was  European  cul- 
ture, not  German  culture;  certainly  not  German 
culture  stiffened  out  into  a  pasteboard  cosmo- 
politanism. 

Let  him  speak  once  more.  "Of  all  the 
evil  results,"  he  says,  in  his  attack  upon 
Strauss,  "due  to  the  last  contest  with  France, 
the  most  deplorable,  perhaps,  is  that  widespread 
and  even  universal  error  of  public  opinion,  and 
of  all  who  think  publicly,  that  German  culture 
was  also  victorious  in  the  struggle,  and  that  it 
should  now,  therefore,  be  decked  with  garlands, 
as  a  fit  recognition  of  such  extraordinary  events 
and  success.  This  error  is  pernicious  because 
it  threatens  to  convert  our  victory  into  a  signal 
defeat.  A  defeat?  I  should  say  rather  into 
the  uprooting  of  the  'German  mind'  for  the 
benefit  of  the  'German  Empire.'  There  can 
be  no  question  of  the  victory  of  German  cul- 
ture for  the  simple  reason  that  French  culture 
remains  as  heretofore  and  that  we  depend  upon 
it  as  heretofore." 

Now  let  us  see  how  Professor  Miinsterberg's 
"sunshine"  of  the  "German  soul,"  and  his  amaz- 

58 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

ing  statement  that  "Germany  is  fighting  today 
the  battle  of  Western  ciziHzation,"  looks  in  the 
light  of  Nietzsche's  criticism.  "Sunshine,"  does 
he  say?  Let  us  hear  Nietzsche:  "Since  the 
war  all  is  gladness,  dignity,  and  self-conscious- 
ness in  this  merry  throng.  After  the  startling 
successes  of  German  culture,  it  regards  itself  not 
only  as  approved  and  sanctioned  but  almost  as 
sanctified.  The  units  of  this  caste  (the  scholar- 
caste.  Professor  Miinsterberg's  caste)  are  too 
thoroughly  convinced  that  their  own  scholar- 
ship is  the  ripest  and  most  perfect  fruit  of  the 
ages — in  fact  of  all  ages — to  see  any  necessity 
for  a  care  of  German  culture  in  general. 
Everywhere,  where  knowledge  and  not  ability, 
where  information  and  not  art,  hold  the  first 
rank — everywhere  in  fact  where  life  bears  testi- 
mony to  the  kind  of  culture  extant — there  is 
now  only  one  specific  German  culture,  and  this 
is  the  culture  that  is  supposed  to  have  con- 
quered France."  In  what  sense  can  German  cul- 
ture be  said  to  have  conquered?  In  none  what- 
soever ;  for  the  moral  qualities  of  severe  disci- 
pline, of  more  placid  obedience,  have  nothing 
in  common  with  culture.  Meanwhile  let  us  not 
forget  that  in  all  matters  of  form  we  are,  and 
must  be,  just  as  dependent  upon  Paris  now  as 
we  were  before  the  war,  for  up  to  the  present 
there  has  been  no  such  thing  as  an  original 
German  culture.  We  ought  all  to  have  become 
aware  of  this  of  our  own  accord.  Besides,  one 
of  the  few  who  had  the  right  to  speak  to  Ger- 
mans in  terms  of  reproach  publicly  drew  atten- 

59 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

tion  to  the  fact.  "We  Germans  are  of  yester- 
day," Goethe  once  said  to  Eckermann.  "True, 
for  the  last  hundred  years  we  have  dihgently 
cultivated  ourselves,  but  a  few  centuries  may 
yet  have  to  run  their  course  before  our  fellow- 
countrymen  become  permeated  with  sufficient 
intellectuality  and  higher  culture  to  have  it  said 
of  them,  it  is  a  long  time  since  they  were  bar- 
barians/' 

"What  species  of  men  have  attained  to 
supremacy  in  Germany?  This  species  of  men 
I  will  name — they  are  the  Philistines  of  culture. 
But  Philistinism,  despite  its  systematic  organi- 
zation and  power,  does  not  constitute  a  culture 
by  virtue  of  its  system  alone;  it  does  not  even 
constitute  an  inferior  culture,  but  invariably  the 
reverse — namely,  firmly  established  barbarity. 
For  the  uniformity  of  character  which  is  so 
apparent  in  German  scholars  of  today  is  only 
the  result  of  a  conscious  or  unconscious  ex- 
clusion and  negation  of  all  the  artistically  pro- 
ductive forms  and  requirements  of  a  genuine 
style." 

But  perhaps  Professor  Miinsterberg  will 
reply  that  these  strictures  of  Nietzsche  were 
written  before  the  appearance  upon  the  scene 
of  "the  Harnacks,  Haeckels  and  Euckens." 
Alas!  I  am  afraid  that  even  "the  Harnacks, 
Haeckels  and  Euckens"  would  not  make  him 
change  his  mind — possibly  might  even  strengthen 
him  in  his  opinion !  "Who  are  the  men  of  cul- 
ture," says  our  professor,  "if  not  the  Harnacks, 
Haeckels  and  Euckens"?    I  am  afraid  the  "men 

60 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

of  culture"  are  precisely  these  Lessings, 
Goethes,  Schopenhauers  and  Nietzsches,  who 
would  be — one  knows  it  only  too  well — not  in- 
clined to  consider  very  seriously  this  particular 
professorial  list. 

It  is,  let  us  repeat,  the  strangest  thing  that 
Professor  Miinsterberg  should  have  forgotten 
Nietzsche.  It  is  very  significant,  too!  It 
means  that  typical  modern  German  culture  is 
just  as  self-satisfied  and  complacent,  just  as 
Philistine,  in  fact,  as  it  was  in  the  days  that  fol- 
lowed the  last  war.  Professor  Miinsterberg 
may  be  able  (doubtless  he  knows  that  well 
enough!)  to  enlist  plenty  of  Anglo-Saxon  pub- 
lic opinion  in  his  tacit  attempt  to  disparage 
Nietzsche  in  comparison  with  Eucken — but  any 
really  cultivated  German-American  must  give 
vent  to  a  bitter  and  melancholy  sigh  at  such  a 
proceeding.  And  what  would  Goethe  say? 
Goethe  who  "could  not  hate  the  French  because 
he  owed  so  much  of  his  intellectual  culture  to 
them." 

For  Professor  Miinsterberg  not  to  have 
mentioned  Treitschke  is  even  stranger  still.  Is 
Treitschke  not  considered  a  genius,  under 
those  "elms  of  Harvard,"  where  the  professor 
tells  us  he  would  like  to  have  a  few  quiet  words 
with  "Monsieur  Bergson"  who  "surely  did  not 
find  anything  worth  learning  in  Russia"? 

No,  it  will  not  do.  These  claims  for  the 
world-importance  of  modern  German  culture 
fall  to  the  ground  when  subjected  to  criticism 
from  those  Germans  who  are  of  real  universal 

61 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

value.  Modern  German  culture,  by  reason  of 
its  patience,  its  elaboration,  its  scientific  system, 
its  immense  erudition,  has  its  place  in  the  world ; 
but  the  place  it  holds  does  not  fit  it  for  any 
dominant  claims.  The  place  it  holds  cannot  for 
a  moment  give  it  a  right  to  compare  its  gifts 
to  civilization  with  those  for  which  we  are  now 
looking  to  France  or  Russia. 

It  is  indeed  of  Russia  that  I  wish  now  to 
speak.  Putting  Nietzsche,  who  is  as  unpopular 
with  patriotic  professors  today  as  Goethe  was 
in  his  time,  aside  for  the  present,  who,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  is  there,  among  modern  German 
writers  or  artists,  who  can  compare  for  origi- 
naHty  with  those  of  Russia?  Sudermann  and 
Hauptmann  are  famous  names,  but  who  would 
name  them  in  the  same  breath  with  Tolstoi, 
Turgenieff,  or  Dostoievsky?  It  was  Dostoiev- 
sky, according  to  Nietzsche's  own  confession, 
who  taught  him  the  only  psychology  he  ever 
needed  to  learn  from  a  contemporary.  It  is 
Dostoievsky  now,  who,  as  a  thinker,  divides  the 
higher  intelligence  of  Europe  with  Nietzsche 
himself.  It  is  quite  possible  tliat  Professor 
Miinsterberg  may  find  support,  here,  also, 
among  those  pseudo-cultivated  circles  to  whom 
he  loves  to  appeal.  No  doubt  there  are  un- 
fortunate people,  both  in  England  and  America, 
who  regard  Dostoievsky  as  a  dangerous  and  un- 
sound writer.  Such  persons  as  wish  to  retain 
that  progressive  "sunshine"  in  their  soul,  of 
which  the  professor  speaks,  might  indeed  be 
frightened   of   this    formidable  and   devastating 

62 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

psychologist,  who  considers  the  truth  of  things 
more  important  than  "sunshine,"  and  the 
tragedy  of  the  human  spirit  more  interesting 
than  the  most  prosperous  "progress." 

But  even  these  unfortunates  bow  to  the  name 
of  Tolstoi  and  recognize  that  Turgeniefif  has 
more  style  in  his  little  finger  than  Hauptmann, 
Sudermann,  Harnack  and  Eucken  in  their  whole 
bodies.  Professor  Miinsterberg's  idea  of  the 
melancholy  "deadness"  of  the  Russian  people  is 
so  ridiculous  that  it  hardly  needs  comment. 
"The  first  thing  that  strikes  you,"  writes 
Maurice  Baring,  "when  you  go  to  Russia,  is  the 
cheerfulness  of  the  people  and  the  good  humor 
of  the  average  man.  The  average  Russian  is 
well-educated,  cheerful,  sociable,  intensely  gre- 
garious, hospitable,  talkative,  expansive,  good- 
humored  and  good-natured.  You  hear  often  in 
Russia  the  phrase  "shirokaya  natura"  applied  to 
the  Russian  temperament — a  large  nature.  It 
means  that  the  Russian  temperament  is  gener- 
ous, unstinted,  democratic  and  kind.  Good- 
heartedness,  and  sometimes  great-heartedness,  is 
the  asset  of  the  average  Russian.  He  is  the 
most  tolerant  of  human  beings.  Stinginess  is  a 
quality  rare  in  Russia.  Thrift  and  economy  are 
not  among  those  virtues  which  are  commonest 
there.  On  the  other  hand,  broadness  of  mind 
and  largeness  of  heart  are  virtues  which  are 
among  the  commonest."  These  facts  about  the 
Russian  people  are  enough  to  make  one  suspect 
that  it  were  quite  as  beneficial,  and  probably 
more  beneficial,  for  civilization  in  general,  that 

63 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

Russia,  rather  than  Germany,  should  be  the 
country  of  the  future.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as 
a  great  American  novehst,  himself  of  German 
descent,  admitted  to  me  recently,  there  is  more 
in  common  between  the  psychological  character 
of  Russia  and  the  psychological  character  of  the 
United  States  than  between  the  latter  and  any 
other  nation.  There  is  the  same  youthfulness 
of  feeling,  the  same  tragic-comic  confusion,  the 
same  beautiful,  living,  chaotic  sense  of  great 
elemental  forces  gathering  together  in  the  dawn. 
Even  Professor  Miinsterberg  recognizes  the  pas- 
sion for  democracy,  for  equality,  which  exists 
in  Russia — a  passion  which  rebels  at  any  at- 
tempt to  substitute  specialized  superiority  for 
the  elemental  primitive  emotions  and  what  is 
basic  in  the  human  race.  The  professor  recog- 
nizes this,  but  uses  it  as  a  reproach.  "The  Rus- 
sian democracy,"  says  he,  "aims  to  bring  high 
and  low  to  the  same  level,  but  by  lowering  the 
high  and  bringing  them  to  the  elementary  state 
of  simple  humanity."  One  feels,  however,  that 
if  the  "high"  are  only  "Haeckels,  Euckens  and 
Harnacks,"  the  modern  exponents  of  what 
Nietzsche  calls  "Philistine-culture,"  this  "ele- 
mentary state  of  simple  humanity"  is  something 
quite  as  desirable.  When  one  seeks  to  discover 
exactly  what  the  professor,  under  his  "elms  of 
Harvard,"  means  by  the  "cultural  depravity"  of 
the  Russian  people,  compared  with  the  "culture 
blessing"  of  the  German  people,  one  finds  it, 
apparently,  in  his  objection  to  the  intensity  of 
their  religious  faith.     Now,  I  can  quite  believe 

64 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.   RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

that  from  the  point  of  view  of  PhiHstine-cul- 
ture,  from  the  point  of  view  of  that  self-satisfied 
superior  "modernism,"  that  has  so  Httle  imagina- 
tion, and  so  much  "sunshine"  in  its  soul,  the  re- 
ligious faith  of  the  Russian  people  does  appear 
weird  and  strange.  It  probably  appears 
ridiculous.  The  "modernists"  of  Germany,  un- 
like the  profounder  "modernists"  of  France,  as 
can  be  noted  in  the  famous  contest  between  the 
Abbe  Loisy  and  Professor  Harnack,  have  not 
grasped  the  true  philosophy  of  religion.  They 
patronize  it  and  explain  it,  but  they  do  not  get 
to  the  bottom  of  it.  Dostoievsky,  who  under- 
stands the  real  spirit  of  Holy  Russia  better  than 
anyone  else,  indicates  clearly  enough  that  there 
are  depths  in  "that  elementary  state  of  simple 
humanity,"  depths  in  "that  complete  submission 
to  the  church"  which  are  much,  much  more  than 
"a  pathetic  mixture  of  ignorance  and  supersti- 
tion." 

When  Oscar  Wilde — does  a  culture-PhiH- 
stine  permit  one  to  quote  Oscar  Wilde? — 
wishes,  in  his  penitentiary  apologia  in  De 
Profundis,  to  indicate  the  essence  of  religion, 
as  it  appeals  to  the  soul  of  an  artist,  it  is  of  the 
worship  of  the  "White  Christ  who  comes  out 
of  Russia"  that  he  is  compelled  to  speak.  The 
great  Nietzsche,  himself  the  enemy  of  rehgion, 
when  he  wishes  to  point  to  an  antagonist  worthy 
of  his  weapons,  points  to  the  Catholic  Church 
of  Seventeenth  Century  France,  and  to  the 
abysmal  soul  of  the  Russian  race.  Does,  one 
wonders.    Professor    Miinsterberg   really    think 

5  65 


THE  WAR   AND   CULTURE 

that  the  mild  latitudinarianism  of  such  discreet 
theologians  as  Harnack  and  Eucken  is  to  be 
the  last  word  of  the  tragic,  troubled  heart  of 
humanity,  upon  the  mystery  that  surrounds  it? 
It  may  be  that  what  we  now  call  religion  is 
destined  to  disappear.  It  is  more  than  doubt- 
ful, if  it  be  so,  in  spite  of  easy  latitudinarian 
compromises.  But  in  any  case  the  culture  of 
the  world  is  surely  better  served  by  a  race  whose 
deep  and  formidable  spirit  is  constantly  brood- 
ing upon  the  ultimate  depths,  than  by  a  race 
whose  materialistic  science  is  so  "active  and  pro- 
ductive," a  race  that  has  so  much  self-satisfac- 
tion, and  "sunshine"  in  its  progressive  soul. 
Put  the  case  clearly  and  fairly.  This  has  be- 
come a  war  of  Ideas.  It  has  become,  what  Pro- 
fessor MiJnsterberg  himself  calls,  a  war  of 
civilization.  What  then  does  German  civiliz'n- 
tion  represent  ?  It  represents  scientific  efficiency, 
scholarly  erudition,  positive  criticism,  and 
materialistic  progress.  And  what  does  Russian 
civilization  represent?  It  represents — even 
Miinsterberg  admits  that — "the  elementary  state 
of  simple  humanity" ;  it  represents  democratic 
equality  and  democratic  sympathy;  it  represents 
(to  quote  Baring  again)  "a  human  Christian 
charity,  warmer  in  kind  and  intenser  in  degree, 
and  expressed  with  a  greater  simplicity  and 
sincerity  than  I  have  met  in  any  other  people 
anywhere  else — a  quality  which  gives  poignancy 
to  its  music,  sincerity  and  simplicity  to  its  re- 
ligion, manners,  intercourse,  music,  singing,  art, 
acting — in  a  word  to  its  art,   its  life,  and   its 

66 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

faith."  For,  after  all,  it  is  not  only  in  its  mysti- 
cal faith  that  Russia  is  pre-eminent.  Some  of 
the  most  remarkable  and  most  original,  of  what 
are  absurdly  called  "cultural  manifestations," 
owe  their  rise  to  the  passionate  seeking  for  new 
adventures  of  Russian  sensibility. 

We  hear  much,  and  justly  hear  much,  of  what 
the  "Little  Theatre  movement"  is  doing  for  the 
modern  drama.  For  the  origin  of  the  "Little 
Theatre  movement"  one  must  look  to  Russia.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  speak  of  Russian  dancing, 
of  Russian  songs,  of  Russian  music.  All  these 
have  a  quality  far  more  interesting  and  stirring 
than  anything  produced  by  modern  German 
culture. 

German  culture  has  become  critical,  pedantic, 
erudite,  imitative,  and  materialistic.  Where  it  dis- 
plays idealistic  tendencies  it  does  so  in  so 
tedious  and  "rational"  a  way  that  all  the 
rhythm  and  lilt,  all  the  surprises  and  the  tang, 
all  the  dangerousness  and  arresting  shocks  of 
the  adventurous  spirit  of  humanity  are  stifled  in 
sawdust. 

After  all,  culture  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  a 
passionate  and  world-deep  flame.  Mere  learned 
tinkering  with  technical  problems,  mere  idealistic 
compromises  between  faith  and  unfaith,  mere 
piling  up  of  knowledge,  mere  system-making, 
machine-driving  and  efficiency-drilling,  do  not 
make  culture.  Culture  is  a  living  thing,  a  crea- 
tive thing.  It  has  to  do  with  magnanimity  of 
temperament  and  with  a  capacity  for  tragic  joys 
and  sorrows.     It  is  the  beautiful  form  and  ex- 

67 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

pression  given  to  the  striving,  struggling, 
wrestling  spirit  of  the  "soul  of  the  world."  It 
is  precisely  because  Tolstoi  has  expressed  in  so 
powerful  a  manner  this  elementary  wrestling  of 
the  human  soul  with  the  fatality  of  circum- 
stance that  he  has  become  such  a  world- force. 
The  influence  of  Tolstoi — an  influence  all  in 
favor  of  democracy — is  itself  proof  of  what  the 
Russian  spirit  is  prepared  to  do  for  the  world. 
Into  what  a  different  atmosphere  are  we  led 
when  we  turn  from  "the  Harnacks  and  Haeckels 
and  Euckens,"  who,  on  Professor  Miinsterberg's 
own  showing,  represent  German  culture,  to  the 
genius  and  humanity  of  Tolstoi ! 

I  do  not  feel  the  presence  of  the  terrible  and 
beautiful  realities  of  life  so  closely;  I  do  not 
feel  the  workshop  of  what  Goethe  calls  "the 
Mothers"  so  formidably  near,  when  I  read 
Hauptmann  and  Sudermann,  as  when  I  read  the 
Russian  writers.  Can  it  be  said  that  even  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg,  with  all  his  technical  psy- 
chology, his  "discipline"  and  discretion,  pos- 
sesses as  much  creative  insight  into  human 
nature  as,  for  instance,  Maxim  Gorki?  One 
cannot  help  thinking,  sometimes,  as  this  appal- 
ling war  goes  forward,  with  such  incredible  en- 
durance and  heroism  on  both  sides,  how  good 
it  would  be  for  the  race  at  large  if  non-com- 
batant writers  and  professors  could  deal  in  the 
same  heroic  and  elemental  manner  with  the 
mysteries  of  life,  wrestling,  with  tragic  obsti- 
nacy, with  the  dark  angel  of  truth.  If  indeed 
there  is  going  to  be  any  real  light  thrown  upon 

68 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

the  bewildering  chaos  of  things  by  human  think- 
ing, it  will  be  surely  thrown  by  such  thinking 
as  is  drastic  and  adventurous  and  "dangerous," 
rather  than  by  such  thinking  as  is  self-satisfied 
and  discreet.  Nature  gives  up  her  secrets  in 
the  final  result  only  to  genius  and  to  courage. 
Life  gives  up  its  secrets  only  to  those  who  re- 
semble life,  in  the  large  desperateness  of  their 
invasions,  and  the  demoniac  violence  of  their 
assaults.  Culture,  in  the  deeper  issues,  is  no 
smooth,  placid,  academic  thing.  It  is  no  care- 
fully arranged  system  of  rules  and  theories.  It 
is  the  passionate-  and  imaginative  instinct  for 
things  that  are  distinguished,  heroic  and  rare. 
It  is  the  subtilizing  and  deepening  of  the  human 
spirit  in  presence  of  the  final  mystery. 

It  is  inconceivable  that  it  should  be  good  for 
civilization  at  large  to  witness  the  triumph  of 
the  German  spirit  over  Europe.  The  triumph 
of  the  German  spirit  over  Europe  would  mean 
the  triumph  of  system  rather  than  life,  of  criti- 
cism rather  than  creation,  of  materialism  rather 
than  mysticism,  and  of  self-satisfied  optimism, 
rather  than  those  tragic  questionings  of  fate 
that  mark  the  perplexity  of  the  noble  soul. 

Scientific  efficiency,  material  progress,  inex- 
haustible erudition — these  are  not  everything. 
Man  cannot  live  by  science  alone,  or  disciphne 
either.  Life  must  be  lived  by  the  masses,  by 
the  people;  and  the  forlorn  hope  of  religion, 
throwing  a  desperate  torch-light  upon  their  road, 
may  prove,  in  the  long  run,  of  more  avail  to 

69 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

the  race  than  much  accumulation  of  technical 
knowledge. 

Professor  Munsterberg,  like  so  many  other 
discreet  idealists,  uses  the  word  "superstition" 
as  a  brand  of  reproach.  I  do  not  know.  It  is 
easy  to  dismiss  a  splendid  and  passionate  re- 
ligious faith  in  this  light  way;  but  I,  for  one, 
have  not  read  "The  Idiot"  and  "The  Brothers 
Karamazov"  for  nothing.  In  looking  round  at 
this  dark  hour  for  some  great  and  tragic  mind, 
capable  of  dealing  with  the  mysteries  of  life  as 
heroically  as  these  enduring  soldiers  (on  both 
sides)  are  deahng  with  the  mysteries  of  death; 
I  find  such  a  mind  rather  in  Feodor  Dostoievsky 
than  in  any  other.  And  it  is  not  necessary  to 
point  out  that  this  great  genius — being  what 
they  call  a  "Slavo-phile" — held  the  view  that  if 
a  tired  and  materialistic  world  was  to  be  saved 
at  all,  it  could  only  be  saved  by  the  courage  and 
faith  of  the  Russian  people.  But  Professor 
Miinsterberg  carries  his  argument  further.  He 
says  that  the  result  of  the  war,  if  the  Allies  win, 
will  be  to  increase  the  power  of  the  Russian 
Empire  out  of  all  proportion. 

"France  will  suffer ;  and  England  will  suffer 
more.  France  and  Italy,  as  well  as  the  northern 
states,  must  become  dependencies  of  the  onmov- 
ing  giant.  Great  Britain  cannot  hold  India  after 
Russia  has  gained  this  new  strength ;  India  is 
ripe  to  fall.  When  India  is  cut  off,  Canada, 
Australia,  South  Africa  must  follow.  In  the 
meantime  Japan  and  China  and  India  will  be- 
gin  their  fight   for  the  control  of   the   Pacific. 

70 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

Chinese- Japanese  and  Hindu  infiltration  of  Cen- 
tral and  South  America  is  the  next  step.  In 
the  meantime  England  and  America  will  them- 
selves have  become  rivals,  which  will  weaken 
each  other.  Jealousies  will  lead  to  hostilities,  and 
when  these  struggles  on  the  Atlantic  have  re- 
duced the  resisting  power  of  the  peoples  about 
the  western  ocean  the  time  will  have  come  when 
Russia  can  win,  over  England,  and  the  united 
Orientals  over  America.  The  final  outcome  will 
be  the  triumph  of  Asia  and  of  Asia  only.  Cul- 
turally Russia  is  Asia.  The  triumph  of  Russia 
over  the  Atlantic,  and  of  Japan,  China  and  India 
over  the  Pacific,  means  the  complete  control  of 
Asia  over  the  globe.  What  does  this  contrast 
of  the  Antipodes  mean?  It  is  a  contrast  be- 
tween feeling  and  thought ;  it  is  a  world-conflict 
between  mystical  devotion  and  efficiency,  be- 
tween the  instructive  hfe  and  the  life  of  techni- 
cal civilization,  between  nature  and  culture,  be- 
tween the  heart  and  the  brain.  From  the  stand- 
point of  western  culture  the  Asiatic  world  must 
appear  anti-cultural,  superstitious,  semi-barbaric. 
From  the  Asiatic  standpoint  the  western  world 
is  unnatural,  artificial,  irreligious,  worthless. 
Every  great  religion  came  from  Asia." 

"Every  great  religion  came  from  Asia."  And 
every  great  philosophy,  too ! — one  might  permit 
oneself  to  reply.  Ah,  no.  Professor  Miinster- 
berg!  If  you  are  right  in  holding  the  view  that 
German  efficiency  and  technical  civilization  is 
what  the  West  stands  for ;  and  Russian  devotion, 
mysticism,   poetic   beauty,   and   clairvoyant   in- 

71 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

stinct,  is  what  the  East  stands  for;  then  all  I 
can  say  is,  I  am  for  the  East  against  the  West; 
and  the  sooner  the  East,  with  its  dreams,  and 
its  poetry,  and  its  beauty,  and  its  distinction, 
conquers  the  West  with  its  aeroplanes,  its  Zep- 
pelins, its  submarines,  its  Krupp  guns,  its 
armored  trains,  and  its  newspapers,  the  better 
for  the  world ! 

But  Professor  Munsterberg  is  not  right.  He 
is  limiting  culture  to  his  technical  German 
schools.  He  is  limiting  western  civilization  to 
German  culture.  He  is  forgetting  the  great 
artists.  He  has  forgotten  the  great  saints.  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg  should  do  better  than  thus 
betray  himself  as  what  Nietzsche  calls  a  culture- 
Philistine. 

He  has,  indeed,  lifted  the  mask  a  little 
dangerously  here.  It  would  have  been  wiser  to 
have  continued  his  cautious  generalities  about 
the  "colored  races."  He  has  shown  that  under 
the  mild  skin  of  a  German-American  professor 
lurks,    after    all,    the    old    Pan-German    wolf ! 

Here,  no  doubt.  General  Von  Bernhardi 
would  be  in  complete  agreement  with  him. 
Such  a  war — to  be  waged  by  the  efficient,  ma- 
terialistic West,  with  its  scientific  "progress," 
against  the  spiritual  and  mystical  East — would 
exactly  suit  the  general's  humor.  Together,  he 
and  Professor  Miinsterberg,  would  be  able  to 
carry  the  war  very  far.  Not  only  in  fact  against 
the  eastern  races,  but  against  their  ideas ;  espe- 
cially against  that  strange,  oriental,  religious 
idea  of  "pity" — so  inimical  to  modern  "culture" ! 

n 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.   RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

How  satisfactory  it  is  to  get  at  last  a  clear 
notion  of  what  Professor  Miinsterberg  means 
when  he  talks  of  culture.  From  his  point  of 
view,  as  he  betrays  it  now,  we  can  better  under- 
stand Nietzsche's  association  of  the  thing  with 
"Philistinism,"  with  a  PhiHstinism,  which, 
"despite  its  organization  and  power,  does  not 
even  constitute  an  inferior  culture,  but  in- 
variably the  reverse — namely,  firmly  established 
barbarity." 

"Asiatic  longing,"  says  the  professor,  in 
order  to  make  his  position  perfectly  clear — 
"Asiatic  longing,  from  Buddha  to  Tolstoi,  means 
a  suppression  of  the  human  demands,  a  somber, 
dreamy  life  without  desires.  Every  great  re- 
ligion comes  from  Asia." 

He  even  conjures  up  the  retrospect  of  some 
triumphant  Oriental  when  "science  and  scholar- 
ship and  inventions  of  a  thousand  kinds"  have 
been  destroyed. 

"Two  thousand  years  ago  Russia  undertook 
to  punish  the  chief  province  of  the  thought-dis- 
trict, its  small  neighbor,  Germany.  The  good 
Russian  Cossacks  destroyed  the  last  of  the 
thought-people  in  Europe,  and  the  Japanese, 
Chinese  and  Hindus  swept  over  America.  Let 
us  be  grateful  that  at  the  decisive  hour  of  this 
holy  world-war  against  the  worshippers  of 
thought,  France  and  England  helped  us 
Asiatics."  Thus  Professor  Miinsterberg,  under 
his  "elms  at  Harvard"! 

Oh,  for  the  great  spirit  of  Schopenhauer,  the 
last   of   German   philosophers,   to   rise   up   and 

73 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

make  its  voice  heard !  Is  not  this  efficient 
thought-driUing,  this  pseudo-scientific  rational- 
ism, precisely  the  very  thing  that  roused  that 
great  European  to  make  his  furious  attacks 
upon  Hegel  and  his  Berlin  theories  of  the 
"rationahty  of  the  real"?  How  clearly  we  dis- 
cern it,  appearing  again — academic  and  mechan- 
ical as  ever — the  cloven-hoof  of  "authority"  and 
"order"  and  "system"  and  "discipline" !  Hegel, 
with  the  Prussian  State  behind  him;  Hegel, 
with  an  enormous  policeman  to  clear  his  path — 
was  he  not  the  very  originator  and  master  of 
this  singular  new  academy? 

Ah !  Professor  Miinsterberg ;  one  must  permit 
oneself  to  remind  you  that  the  really  great  kings 
of  "thought" — from  Plato  to  Spinoza,  from 
Spinoza  to  Schopenhauer — have  looked  ever  to 
the  East  for  their  inspiration. 

It  is,  of  course,  as  all  his  readers  know,  from 
Nietzsche,  and  his  "good  European"  idea,  that 
Miinsterberg  borrows  this  notion  of  a  war  be- 
tween Europe  and  Asia.  But  what  Nietzsche 
meant  by  European  culture  was,  as  we  have 
seen,  something  quite  different  from  what 
Miinsterberg  means.  Nietzsche's  culture  was 
Latin  culture,  Mediterranean  culture,  classical 
culture.  It  was  a  culture  that  issued  in  distinr- 
tion  of  style.  It  was  a  culture  that  held  in  con- 
tempt the  sort  of  fussy  pseudo-scientific  "psy- 
chology" which  is  so  popular  today.  It  was, 
in  a  word,  a  culture  that  is  the  very  opposite  of 
all  that  modern  Germany  means.  It  even  pro- 
fessed a  disdain  for  that  laborious  over-emphasis 

74 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

upon  "science"  which  is  the  modern  battle-cry. 
It  was,  as  all  readers  of  Nietzsche  know, 
essentially  an  "instinctive"  and  a  "natural" 
thing.  It  looked  with  reverence  upon  the 
Hindus  of  India,  and  the  Mohammedans  of 
North  Africa.  It  did  not  hesitate — one  re- 
members many  epigrams  in  that  direction — to 
do  honor  to  the  Arabs  of  the  desert.  Indeed, 
when  it  comes  to  the  point,  one  might  say  that 
the  kind  of  individual  recklessness  and  daring, 
the  kind  of  chivalrous  irony,  displayed  by  the 
Cossacks,  and  the  English,  and  the  French,  on 
the  field  of  battle,  is  much  nearer  the  ideal  of 
a  Nietzschean  hero  than  the  scientific  military 
training  and  obedient  machine-like  endurance, 
of  the  well-drilled  German  hosts. 

We  are  not,  however,  discussing  at  present 
the  appearance  that  culture  assumes  when  it 
goes  to  war.  One  can  only  repeat  that  the 
staggering  heroism  of  both  sides  in  this  terrible 
struggle  makes  one  wish  that  something  of  the 
same  courage  might  be  displayed  by  philosophers 
in  their  wrestling  with  mystery.  If  only  phi- 
losophers and  professors  cared  as  little  for  pub- 
lic opinion,  cared  as  little  for  personal  safety, 
as  these  brave  soldiers  do,  the  intellectual  ad- 
vance of  the  world  would  be  much  more  swift! 

The  heroic  German  nation  is  today  in  arms 
against  the  world,  and  though  the  final  issue  of 
the  struggle  cannot  be  doubted,  it  is  certain 
that  no  easy  triumph  awaits  the  AUies.  This 
cry — "The  Fatherland  contra  Mundum!"  is  one 
that  cannot  help  but  win  responsive  emotion  in 

75 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

the  heart  of  every  human  being  who  is  not  de- 
praved by  commercial  selfishness.  It  is  a  cry 
that  must  even  now  be  rousing  every  brave 
German  home,  from  Danzig  to  Cologne.  But 
the  heroism  of  our  enemies  must  not  blind  us  to 
the  underlying  causes  of  the  struggle,  must  not 
make  us  forget  the  great  issues  that  are  at  stake. 
So  ambiguous  and  chaotic  are  affairs  in  this 
world,  it  may  well  happen  that  such  heroism, 
such  amazing  unity  and  obedience,  should  be 
used — and  nobly  used — in  a  wrong  cause  and 
totally  in  vain!  Our  analysis  of  the  logic  of 
events  shows  how  wrong  this  cause  is,  shows 
how  fatal  it  would  be  for  the  world  if  Germany 
were  to  win. 

Germany  is  fighting — pushed  on  by  her 
"Harnacks,  Haeckels  and  Euckens" — pushed  on 
by  her  Miinsterbergs — in  order  to  fetter  and 
enchain  the  world  in  the  pseudo-scientific  chains 
of  mechanical  order,  mechanical  efficiency,  and 
materialistic  thought.  The  Allies  are  fighting 
to  liberate  the  world  from  this  oppressive 
tyranny.  They  are  using  the  strength  and  dar- 
ing of  the  Russian  Empire  and  the  strength  and 
daring  of  the  British  Empire,  in  order  that  all 
races  and  countries,  both  in  the  West  and  the 
East,  shall  be  free  to  develop  their  intellect, 
their  traditions,  their  art,  their  religious  faith, 
unpersecuted  by  German  science. 

If  when  the  war  is  over  the  Russian  Empire 
and  the  British  Empire,  or  one  or  the  other  of 
them,  were  to  use  their  victory  to  force  Anglo- 
Saxon  ideas  or  Slavonic  ideas  upon  races  that 

Id 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.   RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

were  neither  Anglo-Saxon  nor  Slavonic — upon 
the  Teutonic  states,  for  example — it  would  be 
the  duty  of  the  other  Alhes,  the  duty  of  France  ) 
and  Japan  and  Italy — if  Italy  joins  in — to  see  .^ 
to  it  that  the  great  complex  Idea,  which  they 
all  share  in  common,  was  not  thus  narrowed  and 
perverted. 

No,  this  is  not  a  war  between  Europe  led 
by  Germany,  and  Asia  led  by  Russia  and  Eng- 
land ;  it  is  a  war  between  the  mechanical 
efficiency  of  Germany  and  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  of  the  rest  of  the  world. 

Let  Russia  give  more  liberty  to  her  Polish 
and  Finnish  and  Jewish  subjects ;  let  England 
give  more  liberty  to  Ireland  and  to  India.  Let 
both  of  them  refrain  from  imposing  their  ideas 
upon  Teutonic  people.  Then  it  will  be  perfectly 
lawful  for  Russia  to  snatch  Slavonic  races  from 
the  grip  of  Germany  and  for  England  and 
France  to  liberate  Danes,  Flemings,  and  Gauls.  1/ 

If  the  result  of  the  war,  upon  Germany  her-,^ 
self,  is  to  destroy  the  new  Bismarckian  Empire,  "^Vi 
and  throw  her  back  upon  her  ancient  free  states, , 
no  German  who  loves  real  German  culture  need    <f' 
regret  it.        W^^i4^(t<^  u^^U^  pA^^c*'-'  '•^ 

As  Nietzsche  says,  the  Franco-Prussian  "^ 
war  threatened  to  convert  German  "victory" 
into  defeat.  "I  should  say  rather  into  the  up- 
rooting of  the  "German  mind"  for  the  benefit 
of  the  "German  Empire."  Well!  if  this  war 
ends  with  the  dismemberment  of  the  "German 
Empire"  there  may  be  hope  that  the  "German 
mind"  will  rise  Hke  a  phcEnix  from  its  ashes ! 

77 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

There  will  be,  in  such  a  case,  one  may  trust,  not 
only  an  increasing  of  the  power  of  the  German 
Socialists,  but  a  true  rennaissance  of  German 
poetry  and  art:  a  return,  in  fact,  to  the  great 
days  of  Goethe  and  Heine.  In  this  sense,  in 
saving  Germany  from  culture-Philistinism,  in 
saving  her  from  "the  Harnacks,  Haeckels  and 
Euchens,"  in  restoring  to  her  the  true  classical 
and  European  touch  of  Goethe  and  Heine, 
the  warring  Allies  will  have  achieved  what 
Nietzsche  wished  every  enemy  to  achieve, 
namely,  the  sifting  out  of  the  "bad"  ideas  from 
the  "good"  ideas,  and  the  survival,  out  of  con- 
flict, of  the  latter!  For  how  absurd  it  is,  this 
thing,  that  Bernhardi  tries  directly  and  Miinster- 
berg  indirectly,  to  do !  How  absurd  this  attempt 
to  strangle  the  living  faith  of  the  common  peo- 
ple by  calling  it  "superstition,"  and  the  dreams 
and  poetry  of  the  common  people,  by  calling 
them  "unprogressive"  and  "irrational."  These 
State-worshippers  and  discipline-mongers  would 
make  war  upon  religion  as  they  would  make 
war  upon  individual  liberty;  because  the  cour- 
ageous despair  of  both  these  passionate  ele- 
ments, interrupt  their  organized  and  efficient 
"progress."  But  religion  is  likely  to  outlive  all 
State-worship,  and  individual  liberty  to  flourish 
when  all  organized  empires  are  forgotten ! 
The  great  philosophical  anarchists  of  Paris 
and  Petrograd  stretch  out  their  hands  across  the 
battle  field  to  the  religious  believers  in  Delhi  and 
Tibet,  The  free-thinking  radicals  in  Manchester 
greet  the   faithful  orthodox  in  Moscow.     The 

78 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

opposite  ends  of  the  earth  are  agreed,  in  one 
thing  at  least — that  they  will  not  suffer  a  State- 
Machine  to  over-ride  the  human  spirit,  or  a 
bastard  "efficiency"  to  strangle  the  beauty  and 
variety  of  human  Hfe. 

Let  Americans  who  waver  in  their  allegiance 
to  the  cause  of  the  future  of  the  human  spirit 
because  of  Miinsterberg's  talk  about  "Cossacks 
with  their  Pogroms"  and  English  and  French 
with  their  "colored  races,"  think  of  the  growth 
of  their  own  republic.  Let  them  think  of 
those  great  principles  of  individual  liberty,  as 
against  all  government-machines,  upon  which 
the  American  ideal  is  based.  Let  them  think  of 
Jefferson  and  of  Emerson,  of  Franklin  and  of 
Walt  Whitman;  and  let  them  decide  whether 
they  prefer  to  live  in  a  world  dominated  by 
over-drilled  and  over-bearing  "efficiency,"  or  in 
a  world  of  free,  instinctive  beauty,  and  free, 
instinctive  faith ! 

As  the  same  great  American  novelist,  referred 
to  before,  has  written :  "In  the  meantime  there 
have  sprung  up  social  words  and  phrases  ex- 
pressing a  need  of  balance — of  equation.  These 
are,  right,  justice,  truth,  morality,  an  honest 
mind,  a  pure  heart — all  words  meaning:  a 
balance  must  be  struck.  The  strong  must  not 
be  too  strong;  the  weak  not  too  weak.  But 
without  variation  how  could  the  balance  be 
maintained  ?  Nirvana  !  Nirvana  !  The  ultimate, 
still,  equation." 

This  war  is  beyond  all  doubt  the  greatest 
secular  and  material  event  that  the  world  has 

79 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

yet  seen.  It  is  a  catastrophic,  chaotic,  elemental, 
world-shaking.  The  young  German  Empire, 
strong,  courageous,  clear-headed,  superbly 
organized,  set  itself  to  struggle  for  the  most 
formidable  stake  ever  yet  struggled  for — world 
supremacy  or  downfall.  It  set  itself  to  struggle 
for  the  Teutonic  Ideal  against  the  Russian  Ideal ; 
for  the  Teutonic  Ideal  against  the  world.  In 
the  little  pamphlet  called  "Truth  about  Ger- 
many," that  has  been  distributed  so  carefully 
throughout  this  country  by  a  formidable  com- 
mittee of  German  authorities,  we  have  a  sort  of 
official  paraphrase  of  this  Ideal.  This  little 
book  gives  a  stirring  picture  of  the  opening 
scene  of  the  vast  drama  from  the  German  side. 
I  am  afraid  that  Nietzsche  would  have  com- 
mented very  sardonically  upon  this  scene  but, 
though  histrionic  enough,  it  has  its  pathos. 

"In  greater  numbers  than  ever  before,  the 
deputies,  high  officers  of  the  army  and  navy,  and 
the  civil  government  assembled  on  August  4th, 
first  in  houses  of  worship  to  pray  to  God,  and 
then  in  the  royal  castle  of  Berlin.  The  military 
character  of  the  ceremony  at  the  opening  of  the 
session  showed  under  what  auspices  this  mem- 
orable act  took  place.  The  Kaiser  entered  the 
hall  in  the  simple  gray  field  uniform,  without 
the  usual  pomp.  Only  state  ministers,  generals 
and  admirals,  followed  him  to  the  throne,  from 
where  he  read  his  speech,  after  covering  his 
head  with  his  helmet.  Then  came  a  surprise. 
The  Emperor  laid  down  the  manuscript  of  his 
speech  and  continued  speaking.     "From  now  on 

80 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

he  knew  only  Germans,'  he  said,  'no  difference 
of  party,  creed,  religion  or  social  position,'  and 
he  requested  the  party  leaders  to  give  him  their 
hands  as  pledge  that  they  all  would  stand  by 
him,  'in  Not  und  Tod' — in  death  and  distress. 
It  was  hardly  over,  when  the  Reichstag — an  un- 
heard of  proceeding  in  such  surroundings — be- 
gan to  sing  the  German  national  hymn,  'Heil 
Dir  im  Siegerkranz.'  "  So  the  strong,  organized 
State-Machine  of  the  strong  organized  German 
people  prepared  itself  for  the  event. 

Well,  indeed,  may  we  quote  Theodore 
Dreiser,  "The  strong  must  not  be  too  strong; 
the  weak  too  weak.  For  without  variation  how 
could  the  balance  be  maintained?  Nirvana! 
Nirvana!     The  ultimate,  still,  equation." 

Professor  Miinsterberg  sums  up  the  whole 
thing  as  a  struggle  between  the  West  and  the 
East.  One  is  reminded  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
famous  lines,  which,  however,  do  not  give  the 
privilege  of  "thought"  entirely  to  the  West: 

"The  East  bowed  low  before  the  blast. 

In  patient,  deep  disdain. 
She  let  the  legions  thunder  past, 

Then  plunged  in  thought  again." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  some  sort  of  equa- 
tion— if  that  be  all  "justice"  is — that  we  look 
to  see  emerge  from  this  war.  Granting  for  the 
moment  that  Miinsterberg  is  right,  and  that  the 
triumph  of  England,  France  and  Russia  implies 
a  rennaissancc  of  the  East,  why  should  not  the 

6  81 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

East  have  its  rennaissance  ?  Surely  the  East 
has  something  to  give  the  world  still  that  the 
world  cannot  afford  to  be  without.  If,  as 
Miinsterberg  says,  the  East  represents  poetry 
and  beauty  and  mysticism  and  religion;  if,  as 
Arnold  says,  the  East  represents  thought,  it 
were  surely  not  an  overpowering  calamity  for 
the  world,  even  if  the  German  Empire,  so 
splendidly  united  under  its  Emperor — "his  head 
covered  with  his  helmet" — should  find  its 
strength  less  strong  than  that  of  the  Allies, 
"with  their  colored  races"? 

Stranger  things  have  happened  yet  than  that 
Cossacks  and  Zouaves,  Raj -puts  and  Moors, 
should  unite  with  Canadians  and  Australians  to 
fight  for  the  liberty  of  a  federated  universe. 
For,  however  much  we  may  admire  German 
strength  and  German  science,  the  fact  remains 
that  the  freedom  of  the  human  spirit  can  only 
be  secured  when  all  the  races  of  the  earth,  each 
at  liberty  to  develop  in  its  own  way,  offer  their 
various  gifts  of  intellect  and  of  instinct,  to  that 
resultant  cosmic  movement,  which  is  the  move- 
ment of  the  human  soul  itself. 

We  professorial  and  ethical  interpreters 
bandy  to  and  fro  our  sacred  word  "culture"  as 
if  it  were  a  magic  talisman.  It  is  no  such  talis- 
man. Some  of  the  most  desirable  of  all  human 
beings  are  not  what  we  call  "cultivated"  at  all. 

A  world-shaking  war  like  this  brings  the  world 
back  to  those  profound  elemental  principles 
that  are  deeper  even  than  "culture."  We  learn 
what   heroism    is,    what   self-devotion    is,    what 

82 


GERMAN    CULTURE    VS.    RUSSIAN    CULTURE 

loyalty  and  courage  are.  We  learn  also  some- 
thing of  that  world-deep  instinct  of  pity,  of 
tragic  elemental  pity,  out  of  which  the  Christian 
religion  itself  emerged.  Yes,  even  though 
Miinsterberg  were  right,  and  Germany  and  "cul- 
ture" were  synonymous  terms — it  would  still 
seem  as  though  this  colossal  war  had  broken  the 
crust  of  things  deeper  even  than  "culture";  of 
desperate  lusts  that  link  man  to  the  worst  of 
predatory  animals,  and  of  self-sacrificing  devo- 
tion and  comradeship  that  lift  him  into  the  com- 
pany of  the  noblest  of  the  saints.  The  world- 
spirit  as  it  moves  forward  on  its  mysterious  path 
does  not  depend  upon  the  "culture"  of  any 
nation.  It  dreams  already  of  a  time  when  in- 
stinct and  intellect,  civilization  and  spontaneous 
feeling,  spirit  and  form,  shall  be  more  closely 
fused  aTid  merged  together  than  as  yet  is  even 
visioned.  It  dreams  of  a  time  when  East  and 
West,  Christian  and  un-Christian,  shall  be  united 
in  new  and  unimagined  reconciliations,  surpassing 
the  boldest  fancy.  But  even  that  will  not  be  the 
end.  This  great  war — hke  the  twilight  of  the 
gods — may  end  with  the  fall  of  more  than 
Asgard — but  as  a  New  Asgard  arose  out  of  the 
ruins  of  the  old,  so  will  a  new  world  arise  out 
of  the  ruins  of  this  one — and  so,  on  and  on, 
forever !  Let  us,  who  cannot  hate  the  Germans, 
close  with  the  words  of  the  great  German  poet, 
who  "could  not  hate"  the  French.  "Thou  hast 
shattered  it  all — the  beautiful  world!  Build  it 
again,  again — fairer  than  before."  If  this  is  a 
war  in  which  culture  emerges  as  one  of  the  most 

83 


THE   WAR  AND  CULTURE 

serious  issues  at  stake,  we  must  take  it  up  on 
that  issue.  And  on  that  issue  the  solution  be- 
comes plain.  Germany  is  fighting  for  that  cul- 
ture which  has  been  called  "Imperial."  The 
Allies  must  fight  for  that  culture  which  may  be 
called  "Federated" — the  federated  culture  of  the 
world. 


84 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   WAR   AND   THE   WORLD'S 
FUTURE. 

The  success  of  the  German  campaign  of  anti- 
AlHes  propaganda  has  been  less  marked  than  its 
energy  and  patriotism  deserve.  The  cause  of 
this  lack  of  success  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  the  leading  German  propagandists  in  this 
country  have  chosen  to  adopt  diametrically 
opposite  points  of  view,  points  of  view  that 
answer  one  another.  For  instance,  I  have  now 
before  me  Dr.  Dernburg's  reply  to  Lord  Bryce's 
war-statement;  a  reply  which,  whether  it  re- 
futed Bryce  or  not,  manages  completely  to  dis- 
pose of  Professor  Miinsterberg. 

Miinsterberg,  as  we  have  seen,  discussing 
Treitschke  and  Bernhardi  as  "hashish-dreamers" 
and  "courageous  clowns,"  adopts  an  idealistic, 
innocent-aggrieved  tone ;  calling  attention  to 
Germany's  "pacific  and  industrious  population," 
with  its  one  wish,  to  "develop  its  agricultural, 
and  industrial,  its  cultural  and  moral  resources." 
Dr.  Dernburg,  however,  is  less  inclined  to  cater 
so  smoothly  to  American  public  opinion.  He 
appears  to  have  a  simpler,  more  direct  mind  than 
the  professor,  and  to  be  more  inclined  to  go 
honestly  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 

For  instance,  in  the  article  before  me,  pub- 
lished in  the  Sun  newspaper,  Dr.  Dernburg,  al- 

85 


THE  WAR   AND   CULTURE 

though  he  firmly  declares  that  he  holds  Lord 
Bryce  wrong  in  connecting  the  German  people 
with  Bernhardi,  yet  makes  it  quite  plain  that  he 
thinks  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  Bern- 
hardi's  attitude.  The  greater  part  of  his  article 
is  indeed  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  explana- 
tion of  Bernhardi's  position  and  a  justification 
of  it. 

"General  Bernhardi,"  says  he,  "who  is  not 
a  common  personality,  though  he  had  reason  to 
write  his  book  because  of  the  effeminate  tenden- 
cies that  he  saw  in  Germany;  because  of  the 
materialistic  trend  of  life  and  the  strife  for 
wealth  that  he  observed ;  because  of  the  lack  of 
proportion  between  the  growing  German  popu- 
lation and  its  territory;  because  of  the  small 
share  she  had  in  such  countries  oversea  that 
might  lend  themselves  to  colonization  or  could 
secure  trade.  He  saw  how  this  world  had  been 
divided  up  since  1870;  how  the  French,  with 
39,000,000  inhabitants  in  the  home  country  and 
207,000  square  miles,  had  been  adding  an  over- 
sea empire  of  nearly  3,000,000  square  miles  and 
nearly  60,000,000  people;  how  England,  having 
45,000,000  population  in  the  home  country  and 
120,000  square  miles,  had  been  adding  3,200,000 
square  miles  with  about  95,000,000  people  in  the 
same  period ;  how  Russia  had  taken  nearly  all 
of  the  continent  of  Asia  north  of  the  neutrality 
line  drawn  by  the  English-Russian  treaty  of 
1907;  how  Japan  had  been  doubling  its  terri- 
tory ;  how  even  Belgium  acquired  the  Congo, 
with  900,000  square  miles  and  9,000,000  natives ; 

86 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

while  Germany,  with  208,000  square  miles  at 
home  and  65,000,000  people,  got  about  1,100,000 
square  miles  with  a  population  of  13,000,000 
people,  almost  all  of  which  was  tropical  land  un- 
fit for  colonization,  half  of  it  arid  land  unfit  for 
production.  I  know  the  story  of  that  struggle 
because  I  have  stood  in  it.  It  is  wrong  to  accuse 
Germany  of  coveting  its  neighbors'  territor}^, 
but  in  the  lands  newly  acquired  by  Europeans 
she  felt  that  she  had  not  had  her  due  share. 
The  British  policy  would  mean  that  Germany 
would  have  to  send  her  people  out  into  English 
or  other  countries,  lose  them  to  the  German 
nationality,  and  make  them  subjects  of  other 
states.  Von  Bernhardi  felt,  with  a  great  many 
Germans,  that  they  were  intentionally  being  pro- 
voked, that  they  would  be  forced  to  fight  one 
day  for  their  very  existence.  That  is  why  men 
like  Bernhardi  tried  to  arouse  the  sleepers,  wake 
the  country,  by  preaching  the  necessity  of  the 
war  and  its  ethics.  He  felt  further  that  war 
was  as  unpalatable  to  the  Germans  as  to  other 
nations,  and  he  therefore  pictured  the  greatness 
and  the  necessity  of  it." 

So  much  for  Dr.  Dernburg's  eloquence  and 
convincing  defence  of  General  Bernhardi :  a  de- 
fence with  which  few  thinkers,  capable  of  look- 
ing below  the  surface,  can  help  being  in  sym- 
pathy. 

But  such  a  defence  of  Bernhardi,  such  an  ex- 
planation of  Bernhardi's  attitude  summarily  and 
completely  disposes  of  the  whole  foundation  of 
Professor      Miinsterberg's      book.        Professor 

87 


THE   WAR   AND   CULTURE 

Miinsterberg  adopted  the  line,  more  timid  and 
less  honest,  of  making  a  special  appeal  to  the 
American  people  by  representing  Germany  as 
content  with  her  present  position,  her  position 
of  cultural  and  industrial  development,  and  in 
no  way  anxious  to  alter  it.  Bernhardi  has  con- 
verted the  German  people,  has  converted  Dr. 
Dernburg,  to  the  absolute  necessity  of  altering 
it,  if  Germany  as  a  nation  is  to  survive.  Thus 
Bernhardi's  grand  dictum  of  "world-domination 
or  downfall"  becomes  intelligible ;  becomes  in 
fact  Germany's  motto  in  this  war,  and  the 
motive-power  behind  the  heroism  and  resolution 
of  the  German  people.  It  becomes  clearer  and 
clearer,  the  further  we  go  into  these  underlying 
causes,  that,  given  the  resolution  and  strength 
of  the  German  people,  given  the  efficiency  of  the 
German  people  as  a  fighting  machine,  no  other 
issue  than  that  which  has  come  upon  us  was 
possible.  The  war  had  to  happen.  It  was  in- 
evitable. It  had  to  happen,  because  Germany, 
with  its  growing  population  and  expanding  life, 
lacked  the  requisite  outlets.  It  was  inevitable, 
because  such  great  publicists  as  Treitschke  and 
Bernhardi  had  given  an  articulate  and  convinc- 
ing aim  to  the  evolutionary  instinct  in  the  ex- 
panding German  race. 

How  ridiculous  is  it,  then,  of  Professor 
Miinsterberg  to  endeavor  to  slip  gracefully  into 
the  mould  of  American  public  opinion,  by  find- 
ing the  sole  cause  of  the  war  in  the  expansion 
of  Russia !  Certainly  one  of  the  causes  of  the 
war  is  the  expansion  of  Russia,  but  a  more  di- 

88 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

rect  and  powerful  cause  is  the  expansion  of 
Germany;  an  expansion  concerning  which  Dr. 
Dernburg  is,  as  he  says,  an  answerable  authority, 
"because  I  have  stood  in  it." 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  deal  further 
with  Dr.  Dernburg.  With  much  that  he  says 
of  the  necessity  of  getting  behind  the  "White 
books"  and  "Orange  books,"  to  a  deeper  conflict 
of  interests,  I  am  in  complete  agreement.  I 
have  made  the  point  I  wished  to  make  when  I 
have  shown  the  complete  divergence  of  Dr. 
Dernburg's  line  of  defence,  from  the  line 
adopted,  only  too  plausibly  and  easily,  by  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg,  in  his  desire,  at  all  costs, 
to  appeal  to  American  feeling. 

It  would  be,  perhaps,  a  mistake  to  ignore  com- 
pletely the  curious  and  interesting  attitude 
towards  this  war,  adopted  by  the  leading  Anglo- 
Saxon  publicists  both  in  England  and  America. 
In  fact  it  would  seem  foolish  to  do  so,  since,  by 
reason  of  such  an  attitude  being  so  definitely 
the  orthodox  one  in  the  two  great  Anglo-Saxon 
communities — I  speak  now  of  the  dominant  ele- 
ment in  America — it  is  quite  likely  to  have  a 
by  no  means  negligible  effect  in  the  re-adjust- 
ments and  revaluations  when  the  war  is  over. 

Hitherto  in  this  pamphlet  we  have  paid  little 
regard  to  this  Anglo-Saxon  attitude,  to  this 
Anglo-Saxon  sentiment,  partly  because  we  have 
felt  that  deeper  and  more  cosmic  issues  were 
involved,  and  partly  because  we  have  seen  that 
the  only  philosophic  way  to  answer  the  German 
apologia  is  to  look  at  the  thing  rather  from  a 

7  89 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

world  standpoint  than  an  Anglo-Saxon  one.  It 
is  no  doubt  the  presence  of  this  Anglo-Saxon 
attitude  that  has  bewildered  and  confused  the 
argument  of  Professor  Miinsterberg,  The  pro- 
fessor has  wished  to  introduce  the  larger  issues, 
but  to  introduce  them  in  such  a  way  as  that 
they  should  not  clash  with  Anglo-Saxon  pre- 
judice. 

What,  then,  is  this  orthodox  Anglo-Saxon 
attitude  to  the  war — this  attitude  which  has  been 
called  hypocritical  and  crafty,  sentimental  and 
unreal,  by  so  many  critics.  It  is,  in  a  paramount 
sense,  the  legal  attitude.  It  is  an  attitude  which 
regards  the  world  as  a  vast  congeries  of  affili- 
ated states,  making  up  one  huge  international 
state — the  state  of  humanity  at  large — and 
governed  in  their  relations  to  one  another  not 
by  blind  biological  instincts  of  competition  and 
rivalry,  but  by  the  world  articles  of  a  world- 
wide international  law. 

It  is,  in  fact,  the  humanistic  and  pacific  atti- 
tude of  mind  which  has  recently  culminated  in 
so  many  arbitration  treaties  and  has  found  its 
public  authoritative  expressions  in  the  inter- 
national conventions  of  The  Hague.  Now  one 
can  perfectly  well  see  how,  from  the  German 
point  of  view,  this  attitude  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  smacks  of  hypocrisy. 

For  a  race,  like  the  British  race,  which  has 
already,  by  one  method  and  another,  secured  so 
enormous  a  portion  of  the  earth's  surface  for 
itself,  to  adopt  the  view  that  now — henceforth 
and    forever — the   race-struggle   must   end,   be- 

90 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

cause  such  a  struggle  is  immoral  and  un-Chris- 
tian,  naturally  seems,  from  the  German  stand- 
point, a  little  ambiguous  and  questionable.  Why, 
they  woul3  retort,  must  the  struggle  end  pre- 
cisely here,  while  the  Anglo-Saxon  still  has  the 
best  of  it,  and  not  go  on  a  few  hundred  years 
more  until  the  German  race  may  be  strong 
enough  to  alter  such  a  balance?  It  is  obviously, 
the  Germans  would  say,  the  cue  for  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  to  protest  against  any  alteration  in  the 
status  quo,  when  such  a  status  quo  gives  him 
so  immense,  so  over-proportionate  an  inheri- 
tance. 

It  is  indeed  quite  possible  that  if  it  were  not 
for  the  fact  that  the  Slav  race,  as  well  as  the 
German  race,  refuses  to  subscribe  to  this  status 
quo,  the  thing  might  have  been  achieved ;  and 
The  Hague  convention,  supported  by  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  fleets,  and  subscribed  to  by  Anglo-Saxon 
millionaires,  turned  into  a  grand  universal  police 
institution  for  securing  to  the  victors  the  spoils 
that  they  have  won. 

No  doubt  it  is  as  such  an  institution  that  Mr. 
Carnegie,  for  instance,  welcomes  The  Hague 
tribunal,  associating  it  no  doubt  with  the  same 
kind  of  police-supported  law  that  made  his  own 
victories  in  the  industrial  world  so  safe  from 
"immoral"  attack. 

To  the  mind  of  a  student  of  human  affairs 
who  has  not  read  "psychology"  for  nothing, 
there  is  something  a  little  sinister  about  the 
clamorous  support  given  to  the  peace  idea  by 
persons  who  have  already  won  such  spoils  in 

91 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

that  other  parallel  war  of  modern  industry, 
which  is  just  as  merciless,  and  sometimes  almost 
as  violent.  Perhaps  it  is  a  remote  feeling  of 
some  such  kind  that  has  led  so  many  Socialists 
and  revolutionaries  to  cast  away  their  pacific 
theories  and  go  to  the  front.  They  may  feel 
that  if  the  world  is  to  have  any  war  at  all,  if 
the  strong  are  to  continue  to  conquer  the  weak 
under  any  conditions,  it  is  better  they  should  do 
so  under  the  more  open,  more  honest,  more 
flagrant  conditions  of  military  conflict,  than  in 
the  subtler,  colder,  shrewder,  but  just  as  pitiless 
arena  of  industrial  conflict. 

On  the  other  hand,  wiser  socialistic  opinion 
might  prefer  to  recognize,  and  make  use  of,  this 
agitation  for  world-peace  on  the  part  of  the 
leaders  of  industrial  war.  They  may  feel  that 
when  once  the  idea  of  the  sacredness  and  in- 
violability of  international  law  has  got  itself 
established,  there  will  be  greater  hope  for  the 
establishment  of  a  genuine  inter-class  law  in 
regard  to  the  economic  struggle.  Towards  such 
an  inter-class  law,  towards  such  a  real  legal 
equilibrium  between  capital  and  labor,  the  world, 
they  may  hope,  is  slowly  evolving,  just  as  it  is 
evolving  in  the  direction  of  a  real  international 
law  that  shall  put  an  end  to  the  struggles  be- 
tween nations. 

But,  leaving  the  socialistic  position,  and  re- 
turning to  this  orthodox  Anglo-Saxon  feeling 
about  the  present  war,  how  are  we  to  suppose 
that  Anglo-Saxon  authorities  would  answer  the 
charge    I    have    just    emphasized — the    charge, 

92 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

namely,  of  hypocrisy  and  disingenuousness  ?  I 
fancy  they  would  claim — at  any  rate  we  may 
now  be  allowed  to  claim  for  them — that,  quite 
obviously,  the  events  of  the  past  cannot  be 
changed.  By  whatever  means  the  Anglo-Saxon 
got  possession  of  so  vast  a  portion  of  the 
world's  surface,  he  has  got  possession  of  it,  and 
now  holds  it  firmly.  His  apologists  would  doubt- 
less add  that  not  only  does  he  hold  it  firmly, 
but  he  holds  it  wisely  and  liberally ;  he  holds  it, 
in  fact,  with  as  much  regard  for  the  liberty  and 
local  traditions  of  the  peoples  involved  as  is 
compatible  with  holding  it  at  all.  But  the  fact 
that  the  events  of  the  past  have  enabled  him  to 
secure  all  these  spoils  ought  not  to  be  madt;  a 
reason  for  the  perpetual  continuation  of  the 
struggle.  He  has  secured  them.  That  is  the 
end  of  it.  If  the  Germans  had  been  equally 
favored  by  opportunity  and  chance  they  would 
have  secured  them.  But  as  things  are  now,  the 
past  cannot  be  changed.  And  evolution  must 
go  forward.  And  such  evolution,  forcing  life 
up  to  a  different  sort  of  struggle  upon  a  differ- 
ent sort  of  plane,  must  be  allowed  free  play  for 
new  valuations  and  new  moral  standards. 

It  is  no  doubt  hard  upon  the  German  race,  as 
it  is  hard  upon  all  the  other  races  who  have  not 
been  favored  by  opportunity  as  the  Anglo-Saxon 
has  been ;  but  since  the  past  is  the  past  and 
cannot  be  changed,  these  new  moral  standards 
are  bound  to  take  the  world  as  it  is  as  they 
make  their  new  demands.  Abstract  justice  is 
no  doubt  outraged  in  this  transaction;  but  the 

93 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

world  is  not  based  upon  abstract  justice;  it  is 
based  upon  the  concrete  and  actual  struggle  of 
races  modified  more  and  more  definitely  by  new 
moral  standards  regulating  this  struggle.  And 
it  is  these  new  moral  standards — themselves  as 
much  a  creation  of  evolution  as  anything  else — 
that  are  now  making  race-wars  seem  to  many 
people  so  unpardonable,  so  wasteful  and  so  mad. 
The  German  point  of  view  would  naturally  be 
that  this  new  attitude  towards  race-wars,  this 
new  attitude  in  favor  of  arbitration  treaties  and 
Hague  tribunals  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with 
the  natural  evolution  of  civilized  human  thought, 
but  is  simply  a  crafty  trick  of  the  race  in  pos- 
session to  keep  its  possessions  untouched.  This, 
however,   does   not  quite  cover  the   facts. 

One  cannot  deny  the  evolution  of  ideas,  the 
evolution  of  the  moral  sense.  The  thing,  obvi- 
ously, is  happening  under  our  eyes.  Races, 
other  than  the  successful  Anglo-Saxon,  are  ex- 
periencing it ;  many  individuals,  even  in  the  Ger- 
man race,  have  succumbed  to  it.  The  fact,  so 
lucky  for  the  Anglo-Saxon,  that  he  has  the  re- 
sults of  past  struggles  in  his  favor,  naturally 
makes  it  easier  for  him  to  yield  to  the  new 
movement  than  for  the  others.  But  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  assume  that  he  invented  the  new  move- 
ment. He  may  see  his  opportunity  in  it,  he  may 
make  use  of  it;  but  he  neither  invented  it  nor 
will  he  be  able  to  forecast  its  final  issue.  The 
thing  is  evolutionary,  organic,  inevitable,  spring- 
ing mysteriously,  like  all  other  phenomena  of 
life,  directly  out  of  the  system  of  things. 

94 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

It  is  absurd,  as  some  aggressive  philosophers 
do,  to  assume  that  race-war  is  natural,  but  arbi- 
tration treaties  and  international  law  are  un- 
natural. Both  are  natural.  Both  spring  from 
secret  forces  and  cosmic  tendencies  beyond  all 
human  control.  Of  these  forces  and  these 
tendencies,  both  the  advocates  of  war  and  the 
advocates  of  peace,  both  the  makers  of  treaties 
and  the  breakers  of  treaties,  are  but  the  voice 
and  the  expression.  The  interesting  thing  to 
note,  in  this  connection,  is  that,  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  Germany  is  alone  in  having 
definitely  formulated,  in  deliberate  opposition  to 
this  new  evolutionary  tendency,  an  elaborate 
philosophy  of  war.  Not  only  England,  and  the 
industrial-minded  Anglo-Saxons  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  but  Russia,  has  yielded  to  this  new 
principle.  Bernhardi  himself,  the  great  war- 
advocate,  in  surveying  the  field  of  action,  makes 
this  a  reason  for  disparaging  Russia  in  favor  of 
Japan. 

"In  Russia,  on  the  contrary,"  says  he,  "the 
idea  was  preached  and  disseminated  that 
'patriotism  was  an  obsolete  notion,'  'war  was  a 
crime  and  an  anachronism,'  that  'warHke  deeds 
deserved  no  notice,  the  army  was  the  greatest 
bar  to  progress,  and  military  service  a  dishonor- 
able trade.' "  "If  the  government,"  he  con- 
tinues, "wishes  to  win  a  proper  influence  over 
the  people,  not  in  order  to  secure  a  narrow- 
spirited  support  of  its  momentary  policy,  but  to 
further  its  great  political,  social,  and  moral 
duties,   it  must  control  a  strong  and  national 

95 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

press,  through  which  it  must  present  its  views 
and  aims  vigorously  and  openly.  Such  a  policy 
is  also  the  best  school  in  which  to  educate  a 
nation  to  great  military  achievements.  When 
their  spirits  are  turned  towards  high  aims  they 
feel  themselves  compelled  to  contemplate  war 
bravely.  We  may  learn  something  from  Japan 
on  this  head.  She  did  not  shrink  from  laying 
the  most  onerous  duties  on  the  people.  We  Ger- 
mans have  a  far  greater  and  more  urgent  duty 
to  perform  towards  civihzation  than  the  great 
Asiatic  power.  We,  like  the  Japanese,  can  only 
fulfill  it  by  the  sword." 

So  much  for  the  German  point  of  view  with 
regard  to  this  new  evolutionary  morality  issuing 
in  arbitration  treaties  and  international  law. 
Such  arbitration  treaties,  such  international  law, 
obviously  appears  to  them  as  nothing  but  bio- 
logical weakness  masquerading  under  the  cloak 
of  abstract  justice.  From  such  things,  they 
make  a  direct  appeal  to  the  strength  and  cour- 
age of  a  nation,  its  will  to  power,  its  world- 
ambitions.  The  issue  so  raised  becomes  clearer 
and  clearer,  every  moment,  as  the  war  advances. 
The  German  proclamations  of  victory  in  each 
new  town  they  conquer,  the  Emperor's  words 
of  encouragement  and  command  to  his  formid- 
able troops,  all  bear  out  the  same  underlying 
protest  against  this  new  pseudo-economic, 
pseudo-Christian  movement,  which,  to  the  Ger- 
man view,  springs  from  "the  spirit  of  revolution 
and  unpatriotic  selfishness." 

The   issue   has   therefore   become   clear.     If 

96 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

Germany  wins  in  this  war  the  cause  of  inter- 
national peace  will  be  put  back  a  hundred  years ; 
if  she  loses,  there  is  every  reason  to  expect  that 
it  will  receive  an  immense  and  irresistible  push 
forward.  From  a  biological  point  of  view  the 
advantages  of  this  forward  impulse  of  the  peace 
movement  may  be  questioned  in  some  quarters. 
It  will  undoubtedly  be  questioned  in  Germany, 
where  such  a  result  of  the  victory  of  the  Allies 
will  be  looked  upon  as  an  evil  and  unfortunate 
result;  a  result  due  to  the  triumph  of  the  weak 
and  the  degenerate,  by  mere  weight  of  numbers 
and  money,  over  the  strong  and  the  vigorous. 
But  in  other  quarters,  especially  among  persons 
of  Anglo-Saxon  traditions,  it  will  be  looked 
upon  as  one  of  the  greatest  advances  in  civiliza- 
tion that  the  world  has  ever  made.  It  will  be 
looked  upon — and  there  is  much  to  be  said  for 
this  view — as  an  evolutionary  flinging  of  the 
"struggle  for  existence"  upon  a  higher  and  more 
productive  plane;  it  will  be  looked  upon  as  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era — an  era  where  inter- 
national conflict  is  decided  by  international  law 
and  the  insane  waste  of  human  production 
caused  by  race-war  is  finally  reduced  to  a  mini- 
mum. 

We  are  thus  enabled  to  survey  this  great 
clash  of  ideas  from  a  point  of  view  so  far- 
reaching  that  charges  of  "hypocrisy"  and  self- 
seeking  idealism  lose  their  raison  d'etre.  This 
peace  agitation  may  be  hypocritical,  this  pseudo- 
economic,  pseudo-Christian  movement  may  be 
selfish.     It  does  not  matter  if   they  are.     No 

97 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

doubt  there  must  be,  in  every  great  legal  and 
moral  transvaluation,  motives  that  are  ambigu- 
ous and  impulses  that  are  sinister.  The  old 
eternal  push,  of  the  human  "will  to  live,"  moves 
in  the  darkness  behind  them  all.  But  whatever 
the  motives,  whatever  the  limitations  of  this 
movement,  its  real  underlying  cause  is  the  half- 
conscious,  half-unconscious  struggle  forward  of 
the  evolutionary  forces  of  life  itself  towards 
new  conditions  and  new  forms.  Granting  all 
you  will  to  the  German  criticism  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  "morality,"  it  still  remains  that  if  this 
"morality"  under  the  blind  pressure  of  the  in- 
stinct of  self-preservation,  pushes  the  world  on 
to  a  new  biological  level,  it  will  have  well 
served  its  purpose ;  and  to  be  sarcastic  at  its  ex- 
pense will  be  to  be  sarcastic  at  the  expense  of 
the  spirit  of  life. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  heroic  resistance 
of  Germany  to  the  spread  of  these  new  ideas, 
becomes  the  resistance  of  the  spirit  of  the  past 
to  the  evolutionary  stress  of  the  spirit  of  the 
future.  That  Germany  should  have  such 
formidable  successes  in  these  initial  stages  of 
the  war  only  proves  how  fiercely,  how  obsti- 
nately the  spirit  of  the  past  dies.  We  are  mak- 
ing no  idealistic  claim  as  to  any  radical  improve- 
ment of  human  nature.  Human  nature  may  or 
may  not  be  regarded  as  "improved"  when  it 
lifts  its  "will  to  power"  out  of  the  arena  of 
military  war  into  the  arena  of  economic  war. 
That  is  an  open  question.  Our  point  is  that 
such  a  change  is  inevitable;  that  it  is  biological 

98 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

and  natural ;  that  it  is  evolutionary  and  dynamic. 
Our  hope  is  that  when  it  has  been  achieved,  its 
results  in  the  sphere  of  real  human  welfare,  its 
results  in  the  sphere  of  art  and  science  and  re- 
ligion and  individual  liberty,  will  over-balance 
any  losses  that  may  attend  it  in  the  spheres  of 
loyalty,  comradeship,  heroism  and  devotion. 

It  is  absurd  to  maintain  as  some  Anglo-Saxon 
preachers  have  attempted  to  do — and  as  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg,  deserting  the  German  "lost 
cause,"  and  catering  for  Anglo-Saxon  support, 
endeavors  also  to  do,  with  his  talk  of  Germany's 
"one  pacific  wish" — that  all  the  "morality"  in 
this  struggle  is  on  the  side  of  industrial  develop- 
ment, and  all  the  "immorality"  on  the  side  of 
military  preparation. 

There  is  industrial  immorality,  and  there  is 
military  immorality,  just  as  there  is  industrial 
heroism  and  military  heroism.  Human  nature 
remains  human  nature — that  strange  agglomera- 
tion of  devotion  and  depravity,  of  animal  lusts 
and  saintly  ascetism — and  it  seems  as  though  it 
were  destined  to  retain  this  paradoxical  char- 
acter to  the  end  of  its  history.  But  meanwhile 
the  conditions  under  which  the  inevitable 
"struggle  for  existence"  rages  are  bound  ma- 
terially to  change.  Perfect  human  felicity  is 
doubtless  a  pathetic  illusion,  but  there  is  no 
reason  why  certain  obvious  abuses,  certain 
obvious  results  of  insane  mismanagement, 
should  not  be  removed.  This  is  not  idealism. 
It  is  common  sense.  War  under  modern  con- 
ditions is  such  an  abuse,  such  a  piece  of  pure 

99 


THE   WAR  AND   CULTURE 

insanity;  and  to  put  an  end  to  war  were  not 
to  outrage  the  laws  of  nature  by  a  stroke  of 
monstrous  ideality,  it  were  simply  to  give  a  new 
direction  to  these  laws  by  the  use  of  common 
intelligence. 

In  precisely  the  same  way  we  hold  it  very 
injurious  to  such  improvement  of  conditions 
when  people  lightly  maintain  that  no  scientific 
arrangements  or  economic  readjustments  can 
ever  remove  the  abuses  of  extreme  poverty. 
The  same  species  of  philosopher  will  be  found 
ridiculing  both  these  attempts  as  absurd  idealistic 
dreams,  contrary  to  human  nature.  They  are 
not  contrary  to  human  nature.  Human  nature 
is  pushed  forward  by  the  very  profoundest 
law  of  its  existence  towards  light  and  air  and 
liberty  and  happiness  and  leisure  and  culture.  It 
is  also  pushed  forward  by  a  profound  law  of  its 
existence  towards  competition  and  struggle  and 
rivalry.  But  there  is  no  earthly  reason  why 
these  two  laws  should  not  at  least  be  so  recon- 
ciled that  the  abuse  of  extreme  poverty  and  the 
abuse  of  war  should  not  be  totally  abolished. 
To  lay  it  down  as  an  austere,  scientific  dogma, 
as  some  writers  do,  that  we  must  always  have 
poverty  and  always  have  war,  is  not  to  have 
sufficient  trust  in  the  miraculous  transformative 
power  of  life.  Life  has  produced  the  human 
race  from  among  the  animals.  Why  should  it 
not  be  able,  with  man's  intelligent  assistance,  to 
clear  out  of  the  way  such  grotesque  anomalies 
as  extreme  poverty  and  the  slaughter  of  war? 

This  is  not  idealistic  or   fantastic  dreaming. 

100 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

It  is  the  voice  of  simple  common  sense.  And  it 
is  a  legitimate  hope  for  the  future.  Why  should 
the  human  intellect  which  has  been  able,  as  this 
war  proves,  to  devise  such  splendid  engines  of 
destruction  as  the  Krupp  guns  and  the  Zeppelin 
airships  and  the  submarines  and  the  mines,  not 
be  able  to  devise  some  scientific  plan  by  which 
extreme  poverty  and  military  slaughter  should 
be  brought  to  a  sudden  end?  Whatever  other 
effect  this  amazing  war  has,  it  will  have  the 
effect,  we  may  hope — if  the  Allies  win — of  turn- 
ing the  world's  attention  to  both  these  obvious 
necessities. 

It  is  for  this  reason,  as  much  as  anything, 
that  neutral  Americans,  and  others,  are  bound 
to  hope  for  the  victory  of  the  Allies.  The  vic- 
tory of  the  Germans  would  mean — who  can 
doubt  it? — an  incredible  encouragement  to  the 
policy  of  armaments.  It  would  also  mean — who 
can  doubt  that,  either? — an  immense  strengthen- 
ing of  the  fetters  of  caste  and  aristocracy. 

Now,  although  we  are  quite  aware  that  what 
we  Anglo-Saxons,  Slavs,  and  Latins  call  the 
revolutionary  or  the  democratic  spirit,  does  not 
by  any  means  entail  an  abolition  of  either 
poverty  or  war,  still  we  hold  that  it  is  only  along 
such  democratic  and  revolutionary  lines  that 
this  desirable  result,  if  it  be  ever  reached,  will 
be  reached.  The  socialist  movement  in  the  old 
world  has  been  swept  hopelessly  off  its  feet  by 
the  force  of  a  more  primitive  instinct,  the  in- 
stinct of  race  patriotism ;  but  the  socialist  move- 
ment is  not  dead.     It  is  likely  to  arise  with  re- 

101 


THE  WAR  AND   CULTURE 

newed  strength  and  power  when  the  war  is  over. 
The  idea  of  an  international  strike  to  stop  war 
was  an  idea  that  proved  too  vague  to  be  of  any 
use.  The  German  Socialists,  at  any  rate,  were 
confessedly  Germans  first  and  Socialists  after- 
wards; but  if  Germany  is  beaten  this  will  surely 
not  be  so  again.  And  if  we  have  a  vigorous 
agitation  for  peace,  conducted  at  the  same  time 
from  both  extremes  of  the  industrial  world,  it 
is  surely  not  impossible  that  common  sense  will 
emerge  triumphant.  Such  a  triumph  will  be  no 
millennium.  A  thousand  causes  of  human  misery 
will  remain.  They  would  indeed  remain  if 
poverty  as  well  as  war  were  abolished.  But 
these  things  achieved  would  be,  though  not 
everything,  at  least  something  extremely  im- 
portant— something  that  would  make  the  world 
a  pleasanter  place  to  live  in,  and  a  place  where 
all  those  labors  and  efforts  towards  the  light, 
which  we  name  culture,  would  be  surer  of  an 
uninterrupted  appreciation. 

Even  as  we  write  these  lines  and  conclude  our 
answer,  the  news  comes  of  the  fall  of  Antwerp 
and  the  triumphant  entry  of  the  Germans  into 
that  last  of  the  Belgian  fortresses.  Well !  They 
fight  fiercely,  these  philosophers  of  the  all- 
dominant  State.  And  they  fight  fiercely  be- 
cause, as  Miinsterberg  says,  "In  the  German 
view  the  State  is  not  for  the  individuals,  but 
the  individuals  for  the  State"  because  "the  ideal 
State  unit,  which  has  existence  only  in  the  be- 
lief  of   the   individuals,   is    felt  as   higher   and 

102 


THE    WAR    AND    THE    WORLD'S    FUTURE 

more  important  than  those  chance  personalities 
which  enter  into  it." 

But  the  AlHes  are  ready  to  fight  more 
fiercely  still,  because,  from  their  point  of  view, 
there  is  something  higher  and  more  important 
than  any  State  or  any  group  of  States ;  because, 
above  all  state-craft  and  above  all  state-ma- 
chinery, is  the  freedom  and  liberty  of  the  human 
soul;  because  the  liberty  of  the  human  soul  de- 
mands that  no  machinery,  however  disciplined 
and  efficient,  shall  enslave  it,  and  no  strength, 
however  formidable,  shall  narrow  the  largeness 
of  its  hope. 

How  fatally  true,  in  the  midst  of  all  this 
wrangle  of  academic  tongues,  each  tongue  try- 
ing to  buttress  up  the  cause  of  the  State  he  be- 
longs to,  are  the  great  works  of  that  great  Ger- 
man, of  whom  Professor  Miinsterberg  is  too 
cautious  to  speak.  "The  State  has  never  any 
concern  with  truth,  but  only  with  the  truth  use- 
ful to  it,  or,  rather,  with  anything  that  is  useful 
to  it,  be  it  truth,  half-truth,  or  error.  A  coali- 
tion between  State  and  philosophy  has  only 
meaning  when  the  latter  can  promise  to  be  un- 
conditionally useful  to  the  State,  to  put  its  well- 
being  higher  than  truth.  It  would  certainly  be 
a  noble  thing  for  the  State  to  have  truth  as  a 
paid  servant;  but  it  knows  well  enough  that  it 
is  the  essence  of  truth  to  be  paid  nothing  and 
serve  nothing." 


103 


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UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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